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i V4 
By EDWIN E WHITE 


New and Revised Editton 


FRIENDSHIP PRESS 
150 FIFTH AVENUE 
NEW YORK 


Copyright, 1925, by 
THE BOARDS OF MISSIONS 
OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN THE UW. 6. A. 


Copyright, 1926, by 
HERBERT L. HILu 





Printed in the United States of America 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGD 
A, Worp BEFORE THE STORY . «ow oe Vv 

I. CHRISTIANITY CAPTURES THE ROMAN WORLD .. 9 
II. Tse CoNnverRSION oF EUROPE . ‘ ee ican acide We 
III. Brinerne tHE Cross To THE New Worip . 67 
TV. Tue WINNING oF AMERICA AD hes gahed ey: BALOD 


V. Tue Cuurcu SEEKS THE WHOLE WorLD ., 142 
VI. CuHrist AND THE NATIONS . Y : OREN Aa 


PABIIOGRAP TEM iat Pigr iter Olen en ter SRA Th eae 2 Te 


Si Matus a 
Vet a Abe an 
Pili 


Aww) 
OUR hay 





A WORD BEFORE THE STORY 


The story of the carrying of the good news of 
Christ from one land to another down through 
the ages is a rich heritage of courage and faith 
and self-sacrifice that should be shared by every 
member of the race. To make a glimpse of it 
readily available, especially for young people, 
this book is put forth. Out of the stirring and 
crowded record of nineteen centuries certain in- 
cidents, movements, and characters are here pre- 
sented in an attempt to produce one concrete 
story of the whole on-moving Christian enter- 
prise. 

It should be made clear that this book is in no 
sense intended as a history of missions. Within 
its brief compass, as well as for its specific pur- 
poses, there could not possibly be any effort at 
completeness. It is not even to be assumed that 
the events and the leaders herein discussed are 
more important than many that have had to be 
passed by without mention. What has been de- 
sired is that they should be typical, true to the 
spirit of the several missionary ages, and that 
they should together present a fair and balanced 
picture of the whole movement. 

While there has been no attempt at historical 
completeness, there has been an earnest effort at 


historical accuracy in the use of the material se- 
Vv 


v1 A WORD BEFORE THE STORY 


lected. The issuing of this revised edition has 
afforded a welcome opportunity for correcting 
several mistakes and inaccuracies that appeared 
in the book in its original form,—attributable, 
partly, at least, to rather hurried preparation,— 
as well as for making extensive changes in the 
third chapter and rewriting the fourth chapter 
almost entirely, that they might tell more ade- 
quately the epic story of the plantmg of the gos- 
pel in the New World and its spread throughout 
the United States. 

Those who would read more of the thrilling 
story of missions may readily fmd it in the books 
that were used in the preparation of these pages. 
Obviously, in preparing to write a little book of 
this sort it has been impossible to go back to the 
original sources for the study of nineteen cen- 
turies, and the author has been dependent, for the 
most part, on histories, biographies, and other ac- 
counts of the spread of Christianity. To those 
most used, reference is made again and again in 
the text, and a considerable list of them and other 
readable books is printed at the end of this vol- 
ume. Readers who would go more fully and care- 
fully into the story are referred to the Sugges- 
tions for Study and Discussion on this book, avail- 
able from the publishers. 

Indebtedness would be gratefully acknowledged 
by name if it were possible to the large number 
of friends and co-workers who have freely given 


A WORD BEFORE THE STORY vii 


invaluable help in the preparation of this book. 
Undoubtedly they will feel repaid, as will the au- 
thor, if these pages should afford to some who 
might not otherwise see it an introductory glimpse 
of the age-long and world-wide sweep of the 
valiant adventure of Christian missions. 
Kowin EK. Wuire 

New Yor§r 


September 
1926 


To you from failing hand we throw 
The torch: be yours to hold tt high! 


One soweth, and another reapeth. I sent you to 
reap that whereon ye have not labored: others 
hawe labored, and ye are entered into their labor. 


Freely ye recewed, freely gwe. 


THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


CHAPTER I 


CuristTianiry CAPTURES THE Roman Wortp 


Romans killed Jesus Christ; during the 

decades that followed nearly all his origi- 
nal disciples met violent death, and later succes- 
sive waves of persecution swept off thousands of 
believers. In 312 the Roman Emperor affixed the 
sign of the cross to the standard of his legions, 
and in a little while Christianity was practically 
the state religion throughout his vast dominions. 
The breathless swiftness of this victory is well 
pictured by one writer: + ? 


. BOUT the year 29 ap. the Jews and 


Seventy years after the foundation of the very first Gentile 
Christian Church in Syrian Antioch, Pliny wrote in the 
strongest terms about the spread of Christianity throughout 
remote Bithynia; in his view it already threatened the stability 
of other cults throughout the province. Seventy years later 
still the Paschal controversy reveals the existence of a Chris- 
tian federation of churches stretching from Lyons (France) 
to Edessa (the modern Urfa, in northern Mesopotamia), with 
its headquarters at Rome. Seventy years later, again, the 
Emperor Decius declared he would sooner have a rival em- 
peror in Rome than a Christian bishop. And ere another 
seventy years had passed, the cross was attached to the Roman 
colors. 

1 Adolph Harnack, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity 


in the First Three Centuries. Second Edition, 1908. Vol. II, 
pp. 335, 336. Future footnote references to this book will be 


10 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


At the very first great public preaching of the 
gospel after Christ’s death and resurrection there 
were present in Peter’s congregation representa- 
tives of the ‘‘entire area now known as the Near 
Kast, from Persia on the east to the Mediter- 
ranean on the west and Arabia and Egypt on the 
south, with the addition of Rome far to the west 
in Kurope.’?* Of the three thousand who be- 
heved on that day and the thousands more who 
became adherents to the Christian faith on sub- 
sequent days, many must have been from among 
these visitors to Jerusalem. As they went back 
home they carried the good news to hundreds of 
cities and towns and became the first of those 
multitudes of missionaries who, though unknown 
by name, played so large a part in the early vic- 
tory of the cross. Christians were soon to be 
found over a very large part of the Near Hast. 

The Acts of the Apostles, the most widely read 
missionary book in the world, tells of some of the 
first steps in the spread of the gospel.* A great 
persecution arose. The Christians were scat- 
tered far and wide, and went everywhere preach- 
ing the message of Christ. At once came an indi- 
eation of the overturning which Christianity was 
to work in the world. The Jews would have no 
dealings with the despised Samaritans; but 
made merely to the author’s name. Page references are taken 
from the edition of 1908. 

2 Robert H. Glover, The Progress of World-Wide Missions, 


p: 38. See also Acts 2: 9-11. 
3 See Chapters 8 and 9 of the book of Acts. 


CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN WORLD 11 


Philip went to Samaria to share the good news 
of Christ. After Samaria, Philip preached ‘‘to 
all the cities’? from Azotus to Caesarea on the 
Mediterranean Coast. There were already 
Christians in Damascus, that great and ancient 
capital of Syria. Acts 9:31 tells of ‘‘the church 
throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria.”’ 
The next verse tells of Peter’s visit to the Chris- 
tians who lived at Lydda. A little later he is in 
Joppa on the coast, whence he goes to Caesarea. 

This rapid spread of Christianity throughout 
the territory around Jerusalem was only a little 
foretaste of the outreach of the Christian mes- 
sage. Very early the gospel burst the constrain- 
ing bonds of Judaism and began to spread 
throughout all the world. The first Gentile to 
follow Christ—at least, the first of whom we have 
definite reecord—was an Ethiopian. In all proba- 
bility this happened between 32 and 34 a.p, Thus 
early did the Christian message start on the first 
great foreign mission. The Ethiopian was on his 
way home when he was baptized, and he must 
have taken the good news to his far-distant land. 

The next Gentile to be won to the Christian way 
of life, so far as record shows, was Cornelius, the 
Roman centurion. At this point began that in- 
filtration of Christianity into the Roman army 
which was to be the means of carrying the mes- 
sage to many an outlying land, perhaps even to 
England. 


12 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


These two men, though not Jews, were already 
‘‘God-fearing,’’ that 1s, worshipers of Jehovah. 
They were representative of the many thousands 
throughout the Roman world who had found in 
the God the Jews worshiped the satisfaction they 
could no longer find in their old deities. In many 
a place the Christian messenger found these 
‘‘God-fearing’’ men and women the first to re- 
spond to his message. 

Some of these devout Gentiles who had come 
under the influence of the Jewish religion may 
have been those who founded the church which 
was to have so great a part in freeing the new 
faith from narrowly Judaistic control and sending 
it out to the whole world. On the other hand, the 
founders of that church at Antioch may have been 
just Gentiles—or they may have been Jews who 
had come under Greek influence, as so many 
thousands had. The book of Acts is not positive 
on this point. But, in any case, less than fifteen 
years after the crucifixion of Christ some of his 
followers, scattered by the persecution following 
Stephen’s death, came to Antioch, the far-famed 
metropolis of Syria, magnificent in architecture, 
renowned in arts and letters, a center of world 
trade and perhaps the third city in size in the 
whole Roman world. Their message was heard 
gladly by many people. The mother church at 
Jerusalem was quick to see the significance of this 
development and sent a special messenger to the 


CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN WORLD 13 


church at Antioch. From that church there 
started perhaps the greatest missionary move- 
ment of all time, the movement led by Paul 
through which the gospel of Christ was carried to 
the Western world. 

The journeys of Paul are too well known to be 
narrated here. But it will help toward a grasp of 
the early expansion of Christianity for the reader 
to note again on a map all the great centers of 
influence visited by that one mighty pioneer from 
the time when, with Barnabas, he left Antioch, 
until he arrived in Rome, a prisoner. 

And while Acts tells mainly of Paul’s travels 
and labors, other missionaries in large numbers 
were laboring in many other places. By the time 
the book of Acts was written, perhaps a little 
more than thirty years after Christ’s death and 
resurrection, Christianity was established in 
practically all the great cities of the Empire, in- 
cluding the capital, leaders had been appointed in 
many places and left in charge of churches, and 
a Christian literature was coming into being. 
These churches were bound together by a com- 
munity of interest and kept in touch with one 
another by means of letters and visits of travel- 
ing Christians. Offerings for the relief of Chris- 
tians in need, even in distant cities, were fre- 
quently taken. A great Christian council had 
been held. Christianity already was making such 
inroads on idol worship as to threaten the busi- 


14 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


ness of those who made idols, even in so great a 
center as Ephesus (Acis 19:24). There were 
tens of thousands of Christians in Palestine alone 
(Acts 21:20). Such men as the foster-brother 
of Herod, and Erastus, the treasurer of Corinth, 
had become Christians. There were Christians 
even in Cesar’s household. 

After the New Testament record there are no 
annals such as one could wish for of the early 
spread of Christianity. But some points in the 
remarkable story can be traced. ‘‘By the end of 
the first century Christ had been preached from 
Babylon to Spain (three thousand miles), from 
Alexandria to Rome.’’ Very early in the second 
century the noble Roman, Pliny the Younger, then 
eovernor of Bithynia, was much troubled at the 
thought of executing Christians, ‘‘for many of all 
ages and ranks and even of both sexes,’’ he wrote 
to the Emperor Trajan, ‘‘are in risk of their lives, 
or will be. The infection of the superstition 
has spread not only through cities but into vil- 
lages and country districts.’’ 

Justin Martyr, writing about the middle of the 
second eentury, said, ‘‘ There is not a single race 
of human beings, barbarians, or whatever name 
you please to eall them, nomads or vagrants or 
herdsmen living in tents, where prayers in the 
name of Jesus the crucified are not offered up.’’ 

Toward the end of this century Polycrates, the 
bishop of Ephesus, said he had come to have per- 


CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN WORLD 15 


sonal acquaintance with Christians from all parts 
of the world; 1.e., of the Empire. 

By the middle of the third century the Chris- 
tians In Rome, on good authority, must have 
numbered thirty thousand. There were probably 
at least twice that many by the year 300. 

By the beginning of the fourth century so 
greatly had the followers of Christ multiplied 
that it 1s extremely probable that half the popu- 
lation of at least one or two provinces were Chris- 
tians. In several cities Christians formed the 
majority, even a large majority, of the inhabit- 
ants. It seems clear that by this time Chris- 
tianity was the standard religion in all Asia 
Minor (except certain out-of-the-way districts), 
in a part of Thrace, in Armenia (where Chris- 
tianity was the official religion), and in the city 
of Kdessa, which, according to Eusebius, was 
entirely Christian.* 

In numerous other sections where Christianity 
was not the dominant religion it had attained 
large influence and embraced a very large section 
of the population. This was true in Antioch and 
Syria, in Alexandria and Egypt, along the north 
eoast of Africa, in Rome and parts of Italy, in 


4An excellent short statement regarding the extent and in- 
tensity of the spread of Christianity up to 325 a.p. will be found 
in Harnack, Vol. II, pp. 324-331. These pages summarize the 
careful study of the subject which occupies almost the whole 
second volume. At the end of the volume are eleven very helpful 
maps drawn by the author. 


16 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


Spain, and probably in large sections of Greece, 
and in southern Gaul. 

Furthermore, Christianity had already reached 
out on every side beyond the confines of the Em- 
pire. At an early date there were Christians in 
Parthia, Media, and Bactria, as well as in 
Armenia. To the last-named country Gregory 
the Uluminator was a missionary. After four- 
teen years’ imprisonment he was not only re- 
leased, but he won the royal household so that 
about 302 a.p. Christianity became the state re- 
ligion. Gregory and his many helpers are said 
to have baptized 190,000 persons in twenty days. 
The king, Tiradates, himself toured his kingdom — 
on a royal missionary journey with Gregory, and 
140,000 troops were baptized in three days. 

As early as the first century, possibly, India 
was reached by Christian missionaries. Along 
the west coast there is today a Christian com- 
munion of considerable size, many centuries old 
—though the tradition that it was founded by the 
Apostle Thomas may be discounted. Pantznus, 
the first head of the famous Christian school in 
Alexandria, left his school and went as a mis- 
sionary, presumably to India, though it is pos- 
sible that the country really was southern Arabia. 
Numerous bishoprics were established in Arabia. 

There were Christian churches among the Ger- 
mans by the time of Irenzus, who died at the 
very beginning of the third century. There were 


CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN WORLD 17 


Christians in England very early—tradition says 
in apostolic times. Tradition also has it that 
there were three British martyrs during the per- 
secution under Diocletian, about the beginning of 
the fourth century. Three British bishops at- 
tended the great Council at Arles in 316. During 
that century Britain was rapidly Christianized, 
though these Christians were later overcome by 
invading pagans. 

By the end of this period Christianity had per- 
meated all ranks and classes, and it numbered 
among its adherents princes, high officials, and 
philosophers. As has already been shown, this 
penetration began very early. The Ethiopian 
whom Philip baptized was a high official in the 
court of the Queen of Ethiopia. In 58 a.v. Pom- 
ponia Grecina, the wife of Plautus, the con- 
queror of the Britons, was Christian. In the year 
96 the Emperor Domitian put to death his rela- 
tive, T. Flavius Clemens, a consul, for leaning to 
Judaistic doctrine and atheism. Very likely this 
means that he was a Christian, especially since 
his wife, Domitilla, was banished because of her 
Christianity. She was the mother of two princes 
whom the Emperor had once shown as heirs ap- - 
parent to the throne. Thus near to the imperial 
power did Christianity come even before the end 
of the first century. 

Pantenus, already mentioned, was a Stoic 
philosopher before he became a Christian. The 


18 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


great early father, Justin Martyr, was originally 
a Platonic philosopher. Finding no satisfaction 
in the best philosophic systems, he was attracted 
to Christianity and spent the rest of his life 
spreading the gospel as a traveling sophist, or 
teacher of philosophy. Clement and Origen also 
took Christianity into the world of learning. 

Marvelous as was this expansion of Chris- 
tianity, it is only fair to note that during this 
same period other religions were spreading 
through the Roman Empire with remarkable 
swiftness. Various cults that promised cleansing 
and that initiated their followers into ‘‘mys- 
teries’’ of the spiritual life appealed to a world 
thirsting for a living religion. The cult of 
Mithras especially attracted great numbers. 
Mithras was the Persian god of the light of the 
middle zone between heaven and hell. He fought 
against the powers of darkness and aided the 
faithful in their strife. His worship included 
sacraments and other mysteries solemnized in 
grottoes and underground chapels. Into this 
faith the Emperor Commodus was initiated. It 
became the prevailing religion of the Roman 
armies and by them was carried far and wide. 
There are written accounts of Roman soldiers in 
Britain celebrating the rites of Mithras worship 
with great zeal. Before the downfall of pagan- 
ism the cult of Mithras became the chief rival of 
Christianity. 


CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN WORLD 19 


The victory of Christianity was no easily 
gained triumph. By the perseverance and hero- 
ism of untold thousands of humble followers of 
Christ was it won. It was established in the life 
blood of white-haired patriarchs, of strong men 
and women in their prime, of youth glowing with 
the joy and hope of life, even of little boys and 
girls. 

Very early the persecution of Christians be- 
gan. It was evidently soon after the great day of 
Pentecost that Peter and John were arrested for 
preaching the gospel. A little later the apostles 
were beaten. ‘Then followed the stoning of 
Stephen and the bitter persecution in which Saul 
was a moving spirit. Thus Christianity started 
out into the world a persecuted faith. 

These first persecutions were local and inspired 
by the Jews. It was not many years, however, 
until Christianity came into conflict with the 
Roman authorities and persecutions on a world- 
wide scale began. The reason for this was that 
Christians refused to join in the cult of Emperor 
worship. Rome did not object to other religions 
and new deities; she was always ready to take a 
few more gods into her pantheon. But she would 
not endure men who refused to worship the EKm- 
peror. A sort of understanding had been reached 
with the Jews as a distinct race and they were not 
pressed on this point. Christianity had made 
great progress in the Empire before it was recog- 


20 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


nized by the authorities as anything other than a 
sect of Judaism. The moment it was so recog- 
nized it became a religion ‘‘not allowed.’’ 

This does not mean that Christianity was con- 
tinuously and everywhere persecuted, but Chris- 
tlans were open to persecution anywhere and at 
any time. For many years and in many places 
they met in secret for worship and recognized 
each other by secret signs, to avoid unnecessary 
persecution. For something like two centuries 
and a half the followers of Christ faced the wrath 
of the world Empire of their day. Those years 
that seem now so brief were long generations to 
the faithful who watched and waited and paid for 
their faith with their lives or, harder still, saw 
their loved ones led away to death. 

The world would be infinitely poorer without 
the heroism of those years. Origen, little more 
than a boy, wrote to his father who had been im- 
prisoned for his faith, ‘‘Take heed not to change 
your mind on our account.’’ A mother in Gaul 
ealled to her son who was being led away to 
martyrdom: ‘‘My son, be not afraid; it is not thy 
life they will take away this day. They will only 
change it for the better.’’ Polycarp, the aged 
bishop of Smyrna, was offered escape from death 
if he would deny his Lord. He replied: ‘‘Four 
score and six years have I served Him, and He 
has done me no wrong. How then can I speak evil 
of my King, who saved me?’’ Humble Christians, 


CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN WORLD 21 


like the slave Blandina, gave up their lives 
heroically during the bitter persecutions in Gaul 
under Marcus Aurelius. Many an outstanding 
Christian leader, such as, for example, Justin, the 
great apologist, paid the price of martyrdom. 

The persecutions were not carried out with 
equal rigor throughout the Empire. Here and 
there officials were friendly toward Christianity, 
and in some districts as the years went on the new 
religion gained a very large degree of popular 
favor. Generally, the officials were not required 
to hunt out Christians but only to examine those 
who were accused. Many thousands, neverthe- 
less, were killed for their faith. It is said that 
in Rome, in the catacombs of St. Sebastian alone, 
there rest the bodies of 174,000 martyrs. 

The number of great imperial persecutions is 
generally reckoned as ten, beginning with that 
under Nero, 64 a.p., and ending with that under 
Diocletian, 303. Well known are the stories of 
Nero’s unspeakable cruelty in making a gala 
event of the killing of Christians, covering some 
with inflammable material and using them for 
torches to light up the gardens at night. As well 
known are the stories of Christians being thrown 
to the wild beasts in the arena to furnish sport 
for the populace. 

Under some of the emperors extremely Crastic 
steps were taken in an e.-ort to check the hated 
religion. The last persecution was partie»: : 


22 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


ferocious. The Emperor attempted to stamp out 
Christianity entirely and used the most rigorous 
methods. He realized before he died that his 
efforts were of no avail. Soon after his death 
toleration was decreed. 

Any attempt to explain the sweep of Chris- 
tianity through that old Roman world must con- 
sider two things—the preparation of the world 
for Christianity and the Christian mission itself. 

Christians have been accustomed to talk of the 
preparation of the world for Christ; just how 
great and how far-reaching that preparation was 
is seldom realized. Let us look very briefly at 
the contributions of the Romans, of the Greeks, 
and of the Jews, and at some general preparation. 

The Roman Empire was the nearest thing to a 
world state that mankind has ever known.’ With- 
in its bounds were embraced all the highly de- 
veloped lands around the Mediterranean. From 
the Rhine and the Danube to the African Desert, 
and from the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea 
to the Kuphrates, all nations and peoples owed 
allegiance to Rome and, for the most part, were 
glad to live under her control. Men began to 
think of themselves as citizens of the world. In- 
deed, the Roman law went with the Roman 

5See the excellent quotation from Origen (185-251 A.D.) in 
Harnack, Vol. I, p. 20, showing how early the Christians realized 
the contribution of the Empire to the spread of Christianity. 


See also the article on “Roman Empire” in Hastings’ Dictionary 
of the Bible. 


CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN WORLD 23 


legions, and those who were privileged to possess 
Roman citizenship, an ever-increasing number, 
were in fact citizens of the known world. Such 
was Paul. 

Out from the golden milestone in the Roman 
forum ran the famous Roman roads binding all 
parts of the Empire to its great capital city. 
Along these roads passed the Roman legions, 
governors going to or from their provinces and 
merchants of many a land laden with an amazing 
variety of wares. The sea too was safe from 
pirates and great traffic passed to and fro on it. 
From an inscription on a tomb it is learned that 
one merchant of Phrygia voyaged to Rome no 
fewer than seventy-two times. Travel and trade 
were doubtless freer and safer than at any other 
time until recent years. Thus Paul and other 
missionaries could easily journey far and wide. 

What a busy, moving, cosmopolitan world this 
was! The marvelous opening of the whole world 
in recent years by means of radio, airplanes, and 
other inventions may help us realize the eager 
intercommunication of that day. News ran 
rapidly along the great highways. And so the 
new word of God went from mouth to mouth, car- 
ried by soldier, merchant, official, slave, teacher, 
captive, until at a very early date it had almost 
covered the Empire and penetrated to remote 
places. Adherents of all religions assembled in 
Rome and other great centers, and it was not long 


24 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


before Christianity was being discussed in most 
of these cities. 

Rome also provided western Hurope with a 
language for the gospel, and thought forms for 
some of the great Christian doctrines, as well as 
an example of organization that might be fol- 
lowed. There were local organizations, too, of 
many sorts, that made it easier for churches to 
get started. 

If Rome provided physical unity for the world, 
Greece provided something like mental unity. In 
the time of Christ, Greek was the language of 
learning throughout the eastern part of the Em- 
pire and to a great extent in the West, even in 
Rome itself. It was the language of common 
speech all over the Hast. The Jews of Alexandria 
were probably losing the use of Hebrew, for 
already a Greek version of the Old Testament had 
been made there. In this ‘‘common tongue,’’ not 
in classical Greek, the New Testament was writ- 
ten. It was a highly perfected language and 
peculiarly fitted for expressing the great truths of 
Christianity. In it the disciples could deliver 
their message to all the great cities whither they 
went. The foreign missionaries of apostolic times 
did not have to spend years laboriously mastering 
the languages of many peoples, each with its 
peculiar idioms and thought forms. 

With the Greek language had spread Greek 
ideas. Ways of thinking were common through- 


CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN WORLD 25 


out the known world. Thus, Christians could dis- 
cuss life with men in any city. The noblest 
thoughts of the great philosophers of Greece were 
becoming to a marked extent the thoughts of com- 
mon men. How well some of these conceptions 
prepared the way for the teachings of the Chris- 
tian missionaries is revealed even in so brief a 
summary of them as is made by Dr. Carver: 


The ideas of humanity needful for the gospel; the value of 
man in the universe with the individual as the integer (the 
Sophists); the moral nature of man with conscience as the 
voice of Divinity (Socrates); moral judgments and penalties 
(dramatists); the longing for an ideal man to show the way 
of life (Plato).§ 


Under Greek influence schools had been set up 
in many cities and men were being trained in 
thought. In at least one city Paul taught in one 
of these schools over a period of many months.’ 

Religiously, the greatest preparation for the 
gospel, of course, came through the Jews. Theirs 
was the highest revelation of God the world had 
yet known and theirs the spiritual riches of the 
Old Testament. The Old Testament, perhaps 
often in the Greek translation, was carried far 
and wide by the dispersed Jews. Everywhere the 
Jew was known by the strong religious convic- 
tions which he held and which he insisted on 

6 William O. Carver, A Syllabus of Lectures on the Outlines of 


the History of Christian Missions. 
7 Acts 19: 9. 


26 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


keeping pure at any cost. Among these conviec- 
tions were the belief in one spiritual God, Creator 
of all things, the demand for a moral life, and the 
expectation of a Messiah. 

The surprising part of this Jewish preparation 
' for Christ was its remarkably wide diffusion. 
There were Jews in most of the Roman provinces. 
Jews were thickly massed in Syria, Mesopotamia, 
Babylonia, and Media, and they were to be found 
in large numbers in Egypt, Rome and the prov- 
inces of Asia Minor. Philo reports a million Jews 
in Egypt. There were probably ten thousand 
Jews in Rome two decades after the birth of 
Christ. They were numerous along the coast line 
of Africa and were to be found in Gaul and Spain. 
Augmenting this widespread Jewish influence 
was a very large number of Gentiles who had 
grasped the wonder of the fundamental beliefs of 
Judaism. These had either actually become pros- 
elytes, obliged to keep the whole law, or they 
were known as ‘‘God-fearing,’’ that is, Gentiles 
who believed in and worshiped God. The latter 
were by far the more numerous. 

So good an authority as Harnack estimates 
that the Jews with their proselytes formed seven 
per cent of the whole population of the Empire 
under Augustus.. Some other writers suggest a 
larger figure. In every city of any size into which 


8 For excellent discussion with careful evidence on this spread 
of the Jews see Harnack, Vol. I, pp. 1-9. 


_ CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN WORLD 27 


Christian missionaries went they would find a 
synagogue or at least a little group of people 
meeting somewhere to worship Jehovah. Here, in 
the earliest days at least, they would begin to 
teach. 

There had been much other preparation for 
Christ. Thoughtful men everywhere were dis- 
gusted with a polytheism ‘‘saddled with arrears 
of mythology which excited ridicule and resent- 
ment.’? Philosophers could allegorize away the 
tales of the vicious and immoral lives of the 
Olympian gods, but among common men disgust 
with such deities was spreading. There was a 
growing weariness with the countless cults, sys- 
tems, sorceries, rites, that could bring no satisfac- 
tion. Many hearts were hungry for reality in 
religion. As has been noted already, the so-called 
Oriental religions swept over the Empire winning 
many by their mysteries and their promise of 
cleansing. ‘‘There was a real demand,’’ says 
Harnack, ‘‘for purity, consolation, expiation, and 
healing.’’ Witness the popularity of the cult of 
Ausculapius, the merciful physician.® 

Over against the rising desire for noble charac- 
ter was the great prosperity, luxury, and sin of 
the age. Hiverywhere there was a practical dem- 
onstration of man’s need of redemption. Pessi- 
mism and hopelessness were widespread. Dr. 
C. H. Robinson writes: 

9Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 105-108. 


28 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


The saddest feature of the religion of ancient Greece and 
Rome is the absence of hope. Among the débris of an ancient 
house in Salonica (the Thessalonica of St. Paul’s time) were 
found two funeral urns of apparently the same date: one bore 
the inscription, “No Horr”; the other, “Curist, my Lire.” 1° 


It is not hard to imagine the appeal of the 
Christian mission to such a world. The Chris- 
tians proclaimed one God, the Father and lover 
of men, who is spiritual. God to them was the 
Creator of the universe, present everywhere, 
knowing all things. The Christians told of Jesus 
Christ who made God known, who died for men’s 
sins and rose again. There was a reality about 
this faith in the living Christ not to be found in 
the pagan systems. The gospel was a message of 
salvation, of victory over demons and over death. 
To multitudes it brought the glorious assurance 
of immortality. They were so certain of God and 
of immortality that they had not the least fear of 
death and went to martyrdom gladly. Lucian, 
who rejoiced in ridiculing Christians, said, 
‘‘Those miserable people have got it into their 
heads that they are perfectly immortal.’’ Many 
who came to mock at a martyrdom themselves 
became Christians because of what they saw. 

This new faith was also a ‘‘religion of the spirit 
and of power, of moral earnestness and holiness.’’ 
It made such demands for holy living as no other 
religion had ever dared make, and it also revealed 


10 Charles H. Robinson, History of Christian Missions, p. 6. 


CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN WORLD 29 


a source of spiritual power to make such living 
possible. Justin Martyr says explicitly that what 
won him to Christianity was the moral life which 
he found among believers. Pliny told the Em- 
peror Trajan that he had been unable to prove 
any criminal or vicious acts on the part of Chris- 
tians during all his examination of them, and that, 
on the contrary, the purpose of their gatherings 
was to confirm themselves in conscientious and 
virtuous living. Lucian makes the Christians ap- 
pear credulous fanatics, but also people of a pure 
life, of devoted love, and of a courage equal to 
death itself. 

This is not to say that all the Christian converts 
lived exemplary lives. Paul’s plain words to the 
Corinthians show how even horribly immoral 
practises persisted among some who had pro- 
fessed to come out of paganism into the light of 
Christ. There must have been many weak Chris- 
tians who hurt the great cause and gave some 
ground for the violent accusations of the enemies 
of the faith. When one remembers the enormous 
leap from the loose and vicious living which was 
so common in that day, to the Christian demand 
for absolute purity, honesty, chivalry, and moral 
courage, the wonder is not that some failed but 
that so many were able to catch the vision of 
Christian holiness. 

One of the amazing things about Christianity is 
that it goes to any people, no matter how deep in 


30 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


sin they may be, and proposes, not a little tidying 
up, not a gradual and painless acceptance of 
higher standards, but a complete renewal of life, 
an actual effort to follow Him who revealed in 
himself the glory of a sinless and self-giving life. 
There were in that old Roman world men of noble 
mind who rose above their day and achieved a fine 
philosophy of living. Christianity, however, 
dared demand holy and unselfish living even of 
slaves and outcasts, of officials and rich land- 
owners, of all classes and kinds of men. 

It is true that there were in those days as now 
many who did not get the vision, or, getting it, 
were too weak to achieve results; that there were 
some who became Christian from wrong or in- 
adequate motives; that it sometimes took genera- 
tions for a family or a community to grasp the 
real meaning of Christianity and leave off pagan 
ways; that vestiges of paganism crept into the 
Church. All this cannot be denied. Especially 
when the Church began to be powerful did it at- 
tract many who did not become Christian at heart. 
But as a matter of fact, in the midst of an alarm- 
ingly corrupt age the Christians as a whole lived 
pure and fine lives. They ‘‘set up the majesty of 
God and goodness in the world.’’ And this was 
one of the great witnesses to the power of the 
new faith. 

Christianity was also a gospel of love and 
charity, a strange new teaching. Perhaps to the 


CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN WORLD 31 


Roman world the strangest thing about Christians 
was the love they had for each other. The words, 
‘Hereby shall all men know that ye are my 
disciples, if ye have love one to another,’’ were 
quickly fulfilled. Tertullian says: ‘‘It is our care 
for the helpless, our practise of loving-kindness, 
that brands us in the eyes of many of our oppo- 
nents. ‘Only look,’ they say, ‘look how they love 
one another!’’’ Cecilius is reported to have 
said, ‘‘They recognize each other by means of 
secret marks or signs, and love one another al- 
most before they are acquainted.’’ Again we may 
quote Lucian: ‘‘Their original lawgiver had 
taught them that they were all brethren one of 
another.’’ 

Justin Martyr ends his description of Christian 
worship by saying: ‘‘Those who are well-to-do 
and willing give as they choose, each as he him- 
self purposes; the collection is then deposited with 
the president, who succors orphans, widows, those 
who are in want owing to sickness or any other 
cause, those who are in prison, and strangers who 
are on a journey.’’ About 250 av. the Roman 
bishop wrote that the Roman Church supported 
fifteen hundred widows and poor persons. ‘Trav- 
eling Christians found love and boundless hospi- 
tality from fellow Christians wherever they went. 
Throughout the world the believers felt their in- 
terests to be one. One church would help another 
in need or send aid in time of calamity. 


32 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


Celsus, the able and determined opponent of 
Christianity, was amazed that it should call sin- 
ners and the uneducated, while other religions 
were for those who were clean and had some 
knowledge. There is little doubt that for several 
generations slaves, freedmen, and laborers very 
largely predominated in the membership of the 
churches, though there were many exceptions. 
‘‘It was by preaching to the poor, the burdened, 
and the outcast, by the preaching and practise of 
love, that Christianity turned the stony, sterile 
world into a fruitful field for the Church. Where 
no other religion could sow and reap, this religion 
was enabled to scatter its seed and to secure a 
harvest.’’ #7 
“ If we ask, ‘‘Who were the missionaries who 
carried this gospel through the Roman world?’’ 
the answer must be that the most numerous and 
successful missionaries were not those who would 
today be called missionaries at all. They were 
just Christians who in their daily lives lived 
Christ and rejoiced in the opportunity to make 
Him known. We know the names of some of the 
great leaders—Paul, Peter, John, Pantenus, 
Gregory the Illuminator, and others. But in gen- 
eral, especially after the time of the apostles, the 
great spread of Christianity was due to the faith- 
ful witnessing of tens of thousands of Christians 


11 Harnack. 


CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN WORLD 33 


whose names will never be known on earth. The 
merchant on his travels heard of Christ and loved 
Him, and as he went on his way he passed on the 
good news to others. The slave was sold to a new 
master and while he served, he won the master’s 
household to the great Master of all. The soldier 
moved with his legion to some distant province 
and made known the gospel there. The very 
existence of little groups of men and women who 
believed and tried to live the good news probably 
had as much to do as anything with the final vic- 
tory of Christianity throughout the Roman world. 

There were at the very outset three rather dis- 
tinct groups of missionary leaders—apostles, 
prophets, and teachers. These were recognized 
as having special power. The New Testament 
and some of the earliest other writings tell of 
their work. But these orders did not continue 
very long. After a while as the Church grew, a 
recognized order of the clergy came to be set 
aside for religious leadership. The leaders among 
the clergy in large cities came to be bishops with 
authority over several or many churches. In 
time the bishops of such great centers as Antioch, 
Alexandria, and especially Rome, came to have 
unusual power. 

It was a very simple form of church life that the 
early Christians organized. Perhaps the little 
company of believers met in someone’s home; the 
New Testament speaks of ‘‘the church in your 


34 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


house.’’ Here the Christians would sing hymns, 
read a portion of Scripture, pray, exhort each 
other to faithful and earnest Christian living, 
gather an offering for the poor or the suffering, 
and join in the memorial meal. Justin wrote 
about the middle of the second century : 


On Sunday a meeting is held of all who live in the cities 
and villages, and a section is read from the memoirs of the 
Apostles and the writings of the Prophets, as long as the time 
permits. When the reading has finished, the president, in a 
discourse (or homily) gives the admonition and exhortation to 
imitate these noble things. After this we all arise and offer a 
common prayer. At the close of the prayer, as we have before 
deseribed, bread and wine and water are brought. The presi- 
dent offers prayer and thanks for them according to his 
ability, and the congregation answers, “Amen.” Then the 
consecrated elements are distributed to each one and par- 
taken of, and are carried by the deacons to the houses of the 
absent. 


Later the churches came to erect buildings and 
to develop a ritual of services. Indeed, toward 
the end of this period the outward strength and 
majesty of the Church organization had much to 
do with the spread of Christianity. But by this 
time the great original victory had been won and 
the Christian faith had been maintained for the 
generations to come by myriads of followers of 
Christ who showed forth the Lord in their lives 
and were faithful even unto death if need be. 

It is almost impossible today to grasp the won- 


CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN WORLD 35 


der of that early victory of Christianity. From 
a human point of view a more uneven struggle 
could scarcely be imagined. The Christians were 
hated by the Jews, who everywhere stirred up 
trouble against them. They were hounded by the 
authorities of the old religions. They were 
feared, even loathed, by the people in general, for 
they were considered sacrilegious and atheistic— 
because they spurned the old faiths and had no 
visible objects of worship—and were accused of 
gross immorality. They were opposed by phi- 
losophers who scorned this religion of slaves and 
outcasts. They were persecuted by the civil 
authorities as traitors and dangerous to the wel- 
fare of the state. 

The gospel had been revealed in an outlying” 
province; the Roman Empire was a world of great 
and prosperous cities, proud of their prestige and 
achievements. The gospel came through a race 
despised for its exclusiveness and its rigid adher- 
ence to its own religion and customs in the midst 
of a cosmopolitan and urbane civilization that wel- 
comed new gods and new ideas. It was first en- 
trusted to a handful of uncouth and unschooled 
men; but the world into which it went was a world 
of great and ancient learning, of philosophers 
whose sublime thoughts still inspire men, of an 
art never yet surpassed, of an architecture that 
made the ancient cities marvels of beauty. The 
gospel insisted on a holy life; the world was given 


36 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


to easy morals. The gospel proclaimed one God 
only, but hundreds of ancient deities ruled the 
world. They were enshrined in superb sculpture 
and unsurpassed verse, worshiped in glorious 
temples and beautiful groves, bound up with the 
history and traditions of the people, revered in 
song and story, established in age-old customs and 
habits, holy days and ceremonies, institution- 
alized in powerful systems of priests and rites, 
and backed by the might of the Emperor on his 
throne. 

Yet when the Empire fell, it was the Christian 
Church that took up the burden of Western 
civilization. ‘‘To this church,’’ writes Harnack, 
‘‘the human race round the basin of the Mediter- 
ranean belonged without exception, about the year 
300, in so far as the religion, morals, and higher 
attainments of these nations were of any conse- 
quence.’’ 

Here was the greatest foreign mission, starting 
out from a little province at one edge of the Em- 
pire and not stopping until Christ had been pro- 
claimed and lived in all the domain of the Cesars 
and out in many a land beyond. In the light of 
the achievements of those first centuries, what 
task could ever be too great to ask of the Church? 


CHAPTER II 
THe ConvERSION or Hiuropr 


HE fierce Alemanni in martial array were 
bearing down on the little city of Passau in 
southern Kurope. Readers of Cesar may 

recall the Alemanni. They formed one of the 
most warlike of those restless tribes against whom 
the old Roman Empire was constantly having to 
defend its far-flung borders. Those old borders 
had disappeared in time as wave after wave of 
invasion poured over them. And the Alemanni 
were one of the tribes whose depredations made 
central European life a nightmare. 

Terrified by the prospect of a barbarous army 
sacking their city, the people of Passau did a 
strange thing. They sought out a_ poverty- 
stricken monk in the solitary cell which he had 
made for himself near their city. And this monk, 
Severinus, went forth to meet the king of those 
threatening hosts. So moved was the mighty 
warrior by his plea and by reverence for this man 
of God that he not only withdrew his troops with- 
out harming the city, but he even left the sur- 
rounding countryside unmolested. 

No wonder Severinus was loved and honored 
by a _ grateful people and earned the title, 
‘‘Apostle of Noricum.’’ The poor and the sick 


sought his consolation and help, soldiers coun- 
37 


38 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


seled with him, and the mighty came to him for 
advice. In that troubled land, recurring attack 
and pillage by wild tribes of barbarians brought 
loss and sorrow. Severinus befriended and com- 
forted the suffering and oppressed. He pointed 
to a loving God and to a great hope beyond earth. 
But just as strongly he denounced marauders and 
told the mighty of a God of righteousness who 
loves the poor and hates injustice. 

For nearly thirty years in the second half of 
the fifth century Severinus spent himself for the 
people around Passau and Vienna. Sometimes 
he tramped long distances barefoot over frozen 
streams to collect from various tribes food and 
clothing for the needy, who were his constant 
care, or to secure means to ransom those who had 
been sold into slavery. Again, he stood fear- 
lessly, like a prophet of old, before some ruler to 
denounce his immoralities or cruelties and to urge 
him to use his power to do good. So, here and 
there among the barbarous and pagan tribes of 
Europe, devoted men, careless of their own 
safety, took up their abode and by the sheer power 
of love and holy living won those about them to a 
better way of life. * 

How great an influence one such man could have 
is demonstrated in the story of the evangelization 
of the Goths. In 410 a.v., after years of appre- 
hension, Rome faced the Gothic armies which had 
finally burst the northern barriers and inundated 


THE CONVERSION OF EUROPE 39 


Italy. Centuries had passed since Rome had been 
sacked, but in all its long security the proud city 
had probably never lost the memory of the ter- 
rible Gallic hordes from the north. And as the 
Empire had weakened and the Teutonic barba- 
rians had encroached farther and farther upon its 
territory, the terror among the Romans had risen. 
Now when the barbarians were upon them, some 
remarkable things happened. Rome was spared 
from destruction, churches throughout the land 
were left unmolested, though heathen shrines 
were destroyed, and everywhere the name of 
Christian was a passport to safety. These fierce 
conquerors from the lands beyond were, by this 
time, nominally at least, followers of Christ. 

Through their extended wanderings the Goths 
carried the Bible in their own language, the first 
translation into a barbaric European tongue. In 
fact, a Gothic written language had been invented 
for the purpose. Well was it for Rome that while 
she contended about doctrine and zealously sought 
to extend the temporal power of the Church, a 
man with the love of Christ in his heart chose to 
give his life in service to the barbarians along the 
Danube. 

These conquerors of Rome were among the 
most numerous of the Germanic tribes that over- 
ran western Europe in those days. In the middle 
of the third century they had raided the Balkans 
and Greece and had penetrated Asia Minor as far 


40 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


as Cappadocia, carrying off a great company of 
prisoners from that province. Among the Goths’ 
captives were many Christians, including mem- 
bers of the clergy. Soon, as had happened many 
times before and as was to happen many times 
thereafter, the captors began to learn the way of 
life from their captives. 

In 311, the year of the edict of toleration for 
Christianity, or perhaps in 318, Ulfilas was born, 
a descendant of these captives. At an early age 
he went to Constantinople on an embassy for the 
Gothic King. In that center of church life he re- 
mained for ten years, and before returning to the 
Danube he was consecrated bishop by Constan- 
tine’s chaplain, at the behest of the Emperor. 

Returned to the land where he had been a cap- 
tive, Ulfilas devoted himself to seeking the Goths 
for Christ. From the Emperor Constantine he 
received a grant of land on the slopes of Mount 
Hemus. Thither from across the Danube he led 
his followers, tired of war and threatened by the 
pagans. Little wonder that he was called a 
Moses! While the Huns pressed from the Kast 
and the Ostrogoths and Visigoths went on to con- 
stant wars, he shepherded a prosperous colony 
that learned the arts of peace and quietly tilled 
the soil and cared for their flocks. Christianity 
spread to both branches of the Gothic nation and 
to the Gepide, the Alans, the Vandals, and the 
Suevi. 


THE CONVERSION OF EUROPE 4} 


Ulfilas’ great achievement, in which he set the 
example for missionaries for centuries to come, 
was the translation of the Bible into Gothic. 
Latin and Greek were the languages most bishops 
would have deemed fit for religious use, but Ulfilas 
saw clearly the great advantage that would be 
gained by giving his beloved people the Bible in 
their own tongue. To carry out his purpose he 
had to invent an alphabet, contriving letters for 
sounds known neither to Latin nor Greek, and 
then teach the people to read their own language. 
In these labors too he has been followed by many 
a missionary who has opened the light not only 
of the Bible but of all learning to an entire 
people. 

Not all Europe, however, was won by men like 
Ulfilas and Severinus. In many a picture gallery 
hangs a painting of the imposing spectacle of the 
baptism of Clovis, king of the Franks. Clovis was 
one of the numerous rulers of that age who de- 
manded a sign before he would become a Chris- 
tian. His wife, Clotilda, a Christian, had long 
sought to win him to her faith. In a terrible bat- 
tle against the Alemanni, the Franks were at the 
point of defeat. The supremacy of Gaul was in 
the balanee. Clovis implored his own familiar 
deities in vain. At last he prayed to Clotilda’s 
God for victory, vowing that if he should win he 
would give up his idols and receive baptism. That 
Christmas day in 496 on which Clovis was bap- 


42 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


tized into the Christian faith was a turning point 
in European history. Along with the king, his 
chiefs and army accepted Christianity. And it is 
reported that the three thousand captives he had 
brought from his recent victory were baptized by 
compulsion. 

Back of this baptismal day of Clovis lay one 
hundred years of more or less militant effort to 
Christianize Gaul. The old Roman Gaul, where 
the great Ireneus had labored, where Christian 
martyrs had stained the earth with their blood, 
and where Christianity had become fairly well 
established, had been swept away before the bar- 
barian invasions. And in the place of that prov- 
ince of Roman culture and settled life was a land 
returned to barbarism and contended for by tur- 
bulent tribes who worshiped a whole array of 
gods in sacred groves and at many shrines. 
Across this troubled scene, at an early date, swept 
the strange figure of St. Martin of Tours. Up 
and down the land he went at the head of a band 
of militant monks, breaking down idols, felling 
sacred groves, and destroying pagan altars. 
Awed by their fiery faith, many a simple tribes- 
man beeame Christian. Churches were built, 
bishops ordained, and St. Martin established a 
monastery which trained monks for the mission- 
ary task of generations. 

But no great progress had been made in again 
winning western HKurope until Clovis accepted 


THE CONVERSION OF EUROPE 48 


Christianity. It would be something of a mistake 
to say ‘‘became a Christian,’’ for the great leader 
of the Franks probably perceived little of the 
meaning of Christianity and it is doubtful if his 
character was much affected by it. After being 
baptized he continued his career as a conqueror, 
only now he was the champion of the Catholic 
faith, backed enthusiastically by the Church 
authorities. By his force and bravery Clovis had 
led his small tribe to victory after victory, ex- 
panded its territory, and built a mighty army. He 
proceeded to bring a large part of western Europe 
under Frankish power, fighting gladly against 
Arian Christians and heathen alike and every- 
where forcing the orthodox faith on those whom 
he defeated. 

Under such circumstances it is not to be won- 
dered at that many thousands were baptized who 
had only the vaguest ideas of what it was all 
about. Some attempt was made by religious lead- 
ers to instruct these newcomers but many, of 
course, brought their paganism with them into the 
Church. Nor is it strange that the Church thus 
established at the right hand of the civil and mili- 
tary power and enriched with many gifts of land 
and other property became a rather worldly in- 
stitution and was not the missionary agency 
through which the rest of Europe was reached. 
Indeed, a little later the enthusiastic Celtic 
missionaries from Ireland and Scotland often 


44 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


found the Frankish clergy among their bitterest 
opponents. 

Wholesale baptisms of uninstructed thousands 
and the extension of Christianity by regal in- 
fluence or military force seem to us today impos- 
sible missionary methods, but they played a large 
part in the Church’s plans during the Dark Ages. 
The great Augustine interpreted the sentence 
‘compel them to come in’’ to mean that pagans 
should be forced to accept Christianity. 

A few illustrations may serve to show how gen- 
eral were mass ‘‘conversions’’ in a large section 
of Europe. After Ethelbert, King of Kent, had 
been baptized in 597 and the authorities of the 
kingdom had decided in favor of the missionaries, 
more than ten thousand of the people were bap- 
tized at one time. Legend reports that they per- 
formed the baptism on each other, two by two, at 
the command of Augustine, the missionary. 

Charlemagne followed in the footsteps of his 
predecessor, Clovis, in extending Christianity by 
foree. It took him almost thirty years to subdue 
the Saxons and force them into ‘‘conversion.’’ 
Charlemagne ‘‘had them baptized first and evan- 
gelized afterward.’’ In the process he made such 
laws as this: ‘‘If any Saxon shall try to hide 
himself unbaptized and shall scorn to come to bap- 
tism and shall wish to remain pagan, let him be 
punished by death.’’?* Charlemagne made laws, 

1 Jennie Hall, Our Ancestors in Europe, p. 153. 


THE CONVERSION OF EUROPE 45 


also, to protect and support the churches that he 
built and the missionaries that he sent out. 

When Vladimir of Russia was baptized in 988 
there were baptized also his army and vast multi- 
tudes of his subjects. Vladimir was another mon- 
arch who vowed to become Christian if he should 
be victorious in a certain battle—with the addi- 
tional proviso in his case that he should win the 
Christian princess Ann, a sister of the Emperor 
at Constantinople, as his bride. 

We read of the forcible conversion of Esthonia 
as late as 1219, of Prussia during the period of 
1238-83, and of Lithuania more than a century 
later. In Prussia ‘‘Christian’’ Knights of the 
Sword ravaged the country for decades to ‘‘con- 
vert’’ the inhabitants. Of Lithuania we read that 
Jagellon (King Ladislas III) was accepted in 
marriage by Hedwig, heiress to the throne of 
Poland, on the condition that he should become a 
Christian. Then he went through his territories 
effecting mass conversions by most peculiar 
means, including the promise of warm winter 
underwear to such as would accept Christianity. 

It is gratifying, however, to turn again to faith- 
ful missionaries who won a large part of Europe 
to true religion, for even in those dark days there 
were voices raised against extending the Church 
by material power. Chrysostom said, ‘‘It is not 
lawful for Christians to overthrow error by force 
and violence, but they should labor for the con- 


46 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


version of men by persuasion, speech, and gentle- 
ness.’’* And Hilary of Poitiers insisted, ‘‘God 
will not have a forced homage. Woe to the times 
when the divine faith stands in need of earthly 

power.’’ * | 

We may note, then, that there were three rather 
distinet types of missionary work being prose- 
cuted in EKurope—mass conversions by force or 
outward influence, already alluded to; the work of 
individual missionaries, such as, for example, 
Ulfilas and Severinus; and the work carried on by 
monastic communities and orders. The third in- 
cludes, of course, the labors of some very great 
individual missionaries. 

Let us imagine ourselves in one of the monastic 
communities in Scotland or Ireland in the seventh 
century. All through the little colony, housed in 
its rough wooden buildings, runs a strange spirit 
of excitement this morning. Despite the usual 
midnight service, which all attended, the brothers 
were awake before daylight, not this time because 
the rule of the order requires it, but because of 
eagerness. ‘The morning services, particularly 
impressive this morning, have been held, and the 
necessary morning work in the kitchen and the 
barns attended to as quickly as possible. The 
fields and the workshops are deserted, and the 
whole community has gathered around the gate. 


2C. H. Rohinson, How the Gospel Spread Through Europe, p. 
170. 8 Ibid., p. 171. 


THE CONVERSION OF EUROPE 47 


And now out from their number step a dozen men, 
looking much alike in their monkish robes, who 
slowly make their way down to the beach while 
the others follow. A waiting boat is soon filled 
with both men and provisions. There is a pause 
while all unite in prayer to God to guide and bless 
the departing company. ‘Then the frail craft 
pushes off and another mission has started on its 
way to carry the light of the gospel and the in- 
fluences of civilization to some far land of strife 
and bloodshed and barbarism on the continent of 
Europe. 

As the boat is lost in the distance, the brothers 
quietly climb the slope to take up again their hum- 
ble tasks, in their hearts the thrill of a world 
enterprise for Christ. Day by day they plow the 
fields or reap the crops or grind the grain into 
meal; they cast the nets in the bay or shepherd 
the sheep on the hills; they fell trees to make room 
for a new field or to provide logs for an additional 
rough building to keep up with the community’s 
needs. Harnestly they study the Scriptures and 
the few other books that are among the colony’s 
greatest treasures. Patiently and painstakingly 
they copy the precious words that there may be 
more books for wider use. They preach and teach 
in the near-by communities. Now and then they 
found a new church and put one of their number 
in charge of it. They minister to the sick and 
serve the poor and needy until the whole neigh- 


48 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


borhood comes to depend on them for many kinds 
of help. 

So, in the midst of a pagan district they live, a 
Christian community and a demonstration of a 
better way of life. And gradually the pagan dis- 
trict begins to change, to take on more peaceful 
and settled ways, to copy the monks in making 
clearings and tilling the soil, in living honestly 
and mercifully, and in worshiping and seeking to 
follow Christ. Now and then word comes back of 
the colony that went overseas. Now and then 
other colonies go forth on missions to other fields. 
In the meantime monks come to the community 
from many places, even from great distances, 
sometimes to return later to their own people with 
the benefit of what they have learned. 

ft would seem hard to overestimate the in- 
fluence of these monastic communities in evangel- 
izing and civilizing central, western and northern 
Kurope. The number was unbelievably large and 
some of them are known to have included two or 
three thousand members. Even those who do not 
believe in the monastic idea may well question 
whether any other plan would have worked so 
effectively in that day. 

The state of Europe at the beginning of the 
Dark Ages was deplorable. There had been a 
terrible decline in the late days of the Empire and 
the inroads of the barbarians made matters 
worse. Towns once populous were deserted and 


THE CONVERSION OF EUROPE 49 


overrun with woods and wild animals. North 
of the Rhine alone six deserts are said to have 
existed at the end of the sixth century. Such 
dense forests as the civilized world does not 
know today covered much of what is now the 
most populous part of Kurope. In these gloomy 
forests the Celts and Teutons and Slavs followed 
their gloomy religions, worshiping idols and the 
powers of nature, and all offering human sacri- 
fices on occasions. Oracles were consulted for 
guidance, necromancers and soothsayers flour- 
ished. 

There was no education and, as we have seen, in 
many cases no written language. There was prac- 
tically no knowledge of medicine. And there was 
an enormous amount of cruelty and bloodshed. 
Warfare and conquest were the business of the 
‘‘noble’”’ classes. And conquest frequently meant 
pillage and ruthless destruction. Captives were 
enslaved and cruelly treated. For the common 
people life was hard and poverty-stricken. There 
was little semblance of real justice. Only gradu- 
ally did nations arise able to keep anything like 
peace over wide territories. Amid such unset- 
tled conditions agriculture was naturally crude 
and the necessary arts of civilized life largely 
neglected. 

Instead of seeking advancement in such a world, 
companies of Christian men turned aside and 
sought to develop really Christian communities. 
They set an influential example for rough and 


50 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


warlike peoples in the peaceful and self-effacmg 
mode of their lives. Their practical contributions 
to the development of civilization have been sug- 
gested. The strict and unyielding discipline by 
which they governed their lives, seeking purity 
and holiness, demonstrated the possibility of 
Christian living in a lax and lawless age. 

But while we are cognizant of the struggles of 
many of those who laid the foundations of Chris- 
tianity in the Western world, and of the heroism 
they displayed, let us not deceive ourselves by 
taking too rosy a view of the Church’s history just 
because we are Christians. The monastic orders 
did not remain at all times pure and high-minded. 
Doubtless they came to mean to some a rather 
easy escape from strenuous living. And to others 
they became roads to preferment. Even their 
strict discipline could not always overcome self- 
ishness. There were some that became other- 
worldly to an extent that was very unhealthy. It 
is doubtful if it was always pleasant to get along 
with their great leaders. Some of these did most 
unwise things. A bitter and bloody clan strife 
in Ireland was attributed to Columba’s action 
in insisting on claiming a copy of a precious 
manuscript which he had made by stealth in a 
monastery, the abbot maintaining that the copy 
belonged with the original. 

Just as carefully as we guard against maintain- 
ing too rosy an interpretation of early Chris- 


THE CONVERSION OF EUROPE 51 


tianity we should exercise discretion in judging a 
bygone day by the standards of our own. The 
Dark Ages were difficult days in which to try to 
put into practise the religion of Christ. But 
judged by even the highest standards known, the 
monastic communities made a tremendous con- 
tribution to the conversion of Europe. Always 
their earliest leaders were zealous for splendid 
Christian living. And ever and again new leaders 
arose to insist on higher standards and stricter 
life. The achievements of some of the monks who 
were outstandmg leaders in the winning of Eiu- 
rope deserve to be noted far more fully than the 
limits of space allow. 


In 432 there landed, with a band of followers, 
on the coast of Ireland a Christian messenger 
who was to be known through the centuries as St. 
Patrick. Like Ulfilas, he was coming back to 
the land of his captivity. As a lad of sixteen 
he had been earried off with hundreds of other 
captives in a raid made by Irish chieftains on 
the coast of Scotland. His captives sold the boy 
to a chief in the north of Ireland, whom he served 
asashepherd. After six years he escaped. Later 
he was again taken captive. Again he escaped. 
But he could not remain comfortably at home, 
for he heard in visions voices from Ireland call- 
ing, ‘‘We entreat thee, holy youth, to come and 
walk with us.”’ 


52 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


He went to southern Gaul where he studied for 
the priesthood, and eventually he was ordained a 
bishop. Then Patrick set out to give his life to 
Ireland. He was rebuffed at the first landing 
place. At the next, a chief took him for a pirate 
and was on the point of killing him, when a close 
look at the newcomer made him change his mind. 
This chief became Patrick’s first convert in Ire- 
land and his lifelong friend and helper. 

Up and down the island Patrick earried his 
message in the face of the opposition of the 
Druids. Princes and chiefs were won by his 
earnestness and zeal. He carefully selected lead- 
-ers for the Church and trained them. The young 
of both sexes fiocked to the schools he founded and 
there learned to read by use of the alphabet which 
he invented. It is typical of Patrick’s spirit that 
he particularly sought out his former owner and 
earnestly tried to win him to Christ. 

Doubtless before St. Patrick’s time there were 
Christians and churches in Ireland but their in- 
fluence was evidently very limited for this great 
missionary found the island given over to pagan- 
ism, clan feuds, and bloodshed. He left it, after 
a long life of service, dotted over with schools and 
churches and monasteries, around which were 
growing peaceful communities. Paul Hutchinson 
says of him, ‘‘Not only did he transform Ireland, 
giving it a type of piety and a standard of eul- 
ture better than that of any other part of the 


THE CONVERSION OF EUROPE D3 


Kurope of his day, but he inspired a whole line of 
Christian heroes, who ultimately took the gospel 
through all the rest of northern Europe.’ * 


Columba, born about 521, of royal lineage, 
founded several monasteries and many churches 
in Ireland before he set out in a skin-covered boat 
of wicker for the northern coast of Scotland. 
With his twelve companions he landed on the little 
island of Iona, destined to be long famous as a 
center of Christian learning and missionary zeal. 
To this monastery came men from many lands. 
Both among the Scots, who had recently come 
over from Ireland to found a kingdom and who 
were nominally Christian, and among the Picts 
who were pagans, Columba soon won large infiu- 
ence. Throughout the land he founded churches, 
and Iona became the mother of a large number of 
monasteries. Out to all the surrounding islands 
Columba and his followers carried their message. 

It is remarkable how these early missionaries 
embodied their message in themselves and in- 
spired their followers. Columba was an inde- 
fatigable laborer, his biographer noting that he 
allowed no hour to pass in which he was not en- 
gaged in some useful employment. After his 
thirty-four years of missionary labor Scotland 
could practically be called a Christian country. 
Of Columba and his followers Dr. Carver writes: 

4Paul Hutchinson, The Spread of Christianity, p. 37. 


o4 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


These missionaries preached as far as possible in the com- 
mon tongue, founded monasteries and schools, taught farming 
and the arts of civilization so far as they knew them and con- 
tended for genuine faith, pure living, personal religion. .. . 
Besides the conversion of Scotland, they labored successfully 
in eastern England, where they came into long conflict with 
Roman Christianity; in south Germany, where they were a 
strong factor; in northern France, where they were the 
strongest factor, and in Helvetia (Switzerland and Tyrol).5 


The most famous of the Celtie missionaries to 
the continent was Columbanus. In 589, at the age 
of thirty, he set out for Gaul and, passing by safe 
and comfortable places where he was importuned 
to stay, found a wild and desolate spot for a 
monastery on the Vosges range of mountains, 
bordering the kingdoms of Austrasia and Bur- 
gundy. 

The condition of the country where Columbanus 
settled was characteristic of other parts of Ku- 
rope in those days. ‘‘War and devastation had 
well-nigh effaced the traces of Roman coloniza- 
tion; what Roman industry had cultivated, the 
sword of the barbarous invader, and especially of 
Attila, had restored to solitude, and made once 
more the haunts of the bear and the wolf.’’ ° 

Here, in the Vosges, amid dense forests, first at 
Anegray and then at Luxeuil, Columbanus and his 


5W. O. Carver, A Syllabus of Lectures on the Outlines of the 
History of Christian Missions, p. 16. 

6C. F. Maclear, History of Christian Missions During the 
Middle Ages, p. 136. 


THE CONVERSION OF EUROPE 5d 


followers built their monasteries and began to in- 
fluence wide areas. First they came into conflict 
with the Frankish clergy; later with the wicked 
queen mother who dominated the court of her im- 
moral son and hated Columbanus for denouncing 
him and her. Eimally the monk, with some of his 
followers, was forcibly taken captive and placed 
on a ship bound for Ireland. But a shipwreck 
spoiled the plans of his enemies. Columbanus 
escaped harm, landed on the continent in a 
friendly domain, and hurried through this region 
and other inviting places to some wild parts of 
Switzerland where he and his followers, particu- 
larly St. Gall, continued their work. The severity 
of the discipline to which these monks bound 
themselves and their unwavering insistence on the 
highest moral living had a wide influence. 


Other famous missionaries to Huropean peo- 
ples came directly or indirectly from Rome. The 
story of the abbot Gregory passing a slave market 
in Rome where some fair-haired boys were ex- 
hibited for sale is familiar. He inquired of what 
race they were, and on being told ‘‘Angles’’ he 
said, ‘‘Not Angles, but Angels.’’? He tried to go 
as a missionary to their land but was recalled to 
Rome by popular demand. 

One of the most interesting coincidences in the 
story of missions is to see again and again some 
land being especially prepared to receive the 


56 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


gospel at the very time that men in far-away 
places are being stirred to take the good news to 
that land. In 570, Ethelbert, King of Kent, mar- 
ried a Christian princess, daughter of the King 
of Paris. By agreement she was allowed to keep 
her religion. A bishop went with her to England, 
and HKthelbert permitted Christian services to be 
conducted in a little church that had remained 
standing from Roman-British times. It is not 
surprising that, at this time, when their old re- 
ligion was breaking down, some of the peopie 
wanted to be instructed in Christianity. Requests 
were sent to the Frankish bishops for mission- 
aries. 

In 595, Gregory, now pope, directed that Eng- 
lish youths in bondage in Gaul be bought up and 
placed in monasteries to be trained as mission- 
aries to England. The next year he sent forty 
monks from his own monastery, under their prior, 
Augustine, to begin the evangelization of the is- 
land. Terrified by the perils of the journey and 
the reports of the savage character of the Saxons, 
these missionaries returned to Rome. But 
Gregory sent them forth again. From an island 
near the British coast they sent word to Ethelbert 
that they had come from Rome as bearers of joy- 
ful tidings of the living and true God. Ethelbert 
went to the island to meet them, taking precaution 
to have the meeting outdoors, where he would be 
safe from any magical charms the newcomers 


THE CONVERSION OF EUROPE 57 


might work. After the meeting the king promised 
protection and freedom to the missionaries and to 
any of his subjects who wanted to hear them. <A 
little later the king accepted the new faith. Kent 
became nominally Christian and progress was 
made also in Essex though there was backsliding 
in both places later. 

The strong kingdom of Northumbria was more 
slowly won. Here, again, a Christian queen had 
much influence. The king, Edwin, had married 
the daughter of Ethelbert, who, like her mother, 
was accompanied by a bishop and allowed to prac- 
tise her religion. Edwin finally left to the Witan, 
the national council of his realm, the decision as 
to what religion should be followed by his people. 
What a picture—this gathering of rugged chiefs 
trying to decide between Christ on the one hand, 
and Odin and Thor on the other! In the course 
of the discussion, one thane, so the legend says, 
spoke these beautiful words that bear repeating: 

‘‘The present life of man, O! King, may be 
likened to what often happens when thou art sit- 
ting at supper with thy thanes and nobles in win- 
ter time; a fire blazes on the hearth, and warms 
the chamber; outside rages a storm of wind and 
snow; a sparrow flies in at one door of thy hall, 
and quickly passes out at the other. For a 
moment, while it is within, it is unharmed by the 
wintry blast, but this brief period of happiness 
over, to the wintry blast whence it came it re- 


58 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


turns, aud vanishes from thy sight. Such is the 
brief life of man; we know not what went before 
it, and we are utterly ignorant as to what shall 
follow it. If, therefore, this new doctrine contain 
anything more certain, it justly deserves to be 
followed.’’ * 

The Christian bishop was brought in to explain 
the new religion. It was the high priest of the old 
religion, however, who won the day for Chris- 
tianity by offering to lead the party that should 
destroy the chief temple of the kingdom dedicated 
to Odin and Thor. 

In fifty years the entire heptarchy of England 
had abandoned idolatry, but Christianity did not 
complete its conquest of the island until the year 
1030, during the reign of King Canute. 

England played a great part in the winning of 
northern Furope. 


Out of Northumbria came Wilfrid of Friesland (687-689) ; 
Willebrord, “the Apostle of Holland,” to Friesland (690); the 
brothers Ewald and numerous others; Aleuin, the teacher of 
Charlemagne; and the greatest English missionary before 
modern times, Winfrid, or Boniface, who from 716 was at 
once a great missionary worker, general and statesman, who 
throughout the Germanic regions, “converted, organized mis- 
sions and converts, and reorganized churches into the one 
Church of Rome.” ® 


7 Maclear, A History of Christian Missions during the Middle 
Ages, p. 113. 

8 Carver, A Syllabus of Lectures on the Outlines of the History 
of Christian Missions, p. 17. 


THE CONVERSION OF EUROPE a9 


Dr. Henry van Dyke’s story, ‘‘‘The First Christ- 
mas Tree,’’ purports to tell how Boniface felled 
the sacred oak of Thor before a terrified throng of 
that god’s followers and so won a great victory. 
Boniface labored in Friesland (Holland), Gaul, 
and Germany, penetrating into the very heart of 
the latter land and founding a strong church 
there. It is reported that a hundred thousand 
persons received baptism under his immediate 
direction. In his old age he longed to preach 
again to the heathen Frieslanders who had been 
his first love. There in eastern Frisia, in 735, 
after a considerable success, he was put to death 
by pagans, along with fifty or more missionaries 
whom he had gathered around him on a special 
occasion. 


Charlemagne is reported to have wept as he 
looked out of the window of a banquet hall at the 
sails of marauding Viking ships approaching the 
shore, thinking of what these wild raiders would 
do to his realm after his death if they dared at- 
tack it during his life. True enough, Europe, 
which had known so many invasions and suffered 
so much, was to be afflicted for generations more 
as the slim vessels of the Northmen spread terror 
along her rivers and bore down on all her coasts, 
even as far as Greece. The state in which the 
Vikings kept Europe may be imagined from the 
insertion into the prayers of the Church of a peti- 


60 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


tion for deliverance from ‘‘the fury of the North- 
men.”’ 

Everywhere these invaders destroyed Christian 
churches and monasteries an@ threatened to undo 
the labor of generations. Clearly, if Christian 
lands were to save their most precious posses- 
sions, they must try to convert the bold pillagers 
from the North. But what a task! Even in the 
face of such a prospect, however, faith and mis- 
sionary heroism did not falter. A monk named 
Anskar was nominated to undertake the venture 
into Denmark and gladly aecepted the task. So 
threatening was the undertaking that on his first 
trip only one monk dared accompany him. 

After two years of work there was a rebellion 
against the king under whose auspices Anskar 
had entered Denmark and the missionary was 
driven out, only to find that an embassy had come 
from the King of Sweden to Emperor Louis, ask- 
ing for someone to teach his people about Christ. 
Thus Anskar began work in Sweden. Later he 
was made archbishop at Hamburg, to direct all 
the work among the Northmen. And though 
pagan hordes swept down and destroyed Ham- 
burg, not even sparing the Christian books that 
were so scarce, the work went on. In addition to 
his other labors Anskar was a medical mission- 
ary. He was a man of unusually devoted prayer 
life and was looked upon as a saint, even by men 
of his own time. 


THE CONVERSION OF EUROPE 61 


The work which Anskar started required gen- 
erations for its completion. The Danish King 
Harold with his army was baptized in 972, but 
Sweyn reestablished paganism a little later. The 
first Christian king of Norway was Hakon (936- 
944). Harl Hakon reestablished paganism after 
a generation. About 1000 a.v., the forcible con- 
version of the country began. There was not a 
Christian king of Sweden until Olaf (993-1024), 
and the great image of Thor was not destroyed 
until 1015. 


Something must be said of the work in eastern 
Hurope though the Eastern Church was not an 
active missionary agency. Behind the waves of 
Celtic and Teutonic invasion of Europe from the 
Hast, there followed the Slavs, who settled in the 
regions left by the Teutons. In time they came 
to inhabit, besides other lands, much of the Balkan 
territory, Russia, and what is now Poland. The 
great missionaries to the Slavs were Cyril and 
Methodius, brothers, members of the church in 
Thessalonica which had been originally founded 
by Paul. One day there came a call for mission- 
aries to go to Crimea and help the king of the 
Cazars decide between Mohammedanism, Juda- 
ism, and Christianity as the religion to displace 
idolatry. Cyril went and was successful. 

Then came a eall from Bulgaria. The Bul- 
garians were Tatars who had conquered the Slavic 


62 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


population and adopted their language. Again a 
Christian woman wielded a great influence. A sis- 
ter of Prince Bogoris had been a captive in Con- 
stantinople and had there become a Christian. 
Her efforts to convert her brother were unsuc- 
cessful until during a famine when, after his 
native deities had failed him, she induced him to 
pray to God for help. Another story says that 
the barbarie chieftain was terrified into accepting 
Christianity by a great painting of the Last Judg- 
ment with which the missionary Methodius, who 
was also an artist, adorned his hall after persua- 
sion had failed to reach the king. Whatever the 
cause, Bogoris and many of his court were 
eventually baptized. 

From Bulgaria, Cyril and Methodius pressed on 
to Hungary where they worked for the conversion 
of the Moravians and Bohemians. Of the glorious 
missionary work of the Moravian Church there 
will be occasion to speak later. Someone has sug- 
gested that a direct line might be traced from the 
call of the man of Macedonia down through the 
Thessalonian Church and, through the Moravians, 
out to the ends of the earth. 

Cyril and Methodius translated the Bible into. 
the Slavonie tongue, after having reduced that 
language to writing. They made use of Greek, 
Armenian, and Hebrew letters in the alphabet 
they invented. So again missionaries gave a 
whole people the Bible in their own tongue and 


THE CONVERSION OF EUROPE 63 


it was they also laid the foundation of a great 
literature. 


The greatest nation adhering to the Hastern 
Church came peacefully to Christianity. In 955 
Princess Olga of Russia journeyed to Constanti- 
nople to learn more about the Christian religion. 
There she was baptized. Returning to Russia, 
she tried to persuade her son to accept her faith, 
but that hardy warrior continued to wrap himself 
by night in a bear-skin and sleep on the ground 
with his head pillowed on a saddle, and by day to 
hold to the gods of his fathers. Olga’s grandson, 
Vladimir, came much under her influence, but for 
a time he too turned to paganism, even offering 
human sacrifices in times of great stress. Emis- 
saries of each of the three great religions sought 
him asaconvert. He sent representatives to view 
these several religions at work and they returned 
greatly impressed by what they had seen in Con- 
stantinople, particularly in the great Church of 
St. Sophia. 

The conditions on which Vladimir finally ac- 
cepted Christianity have already been stated. 
He caused the huge idol, Peroun, to be dragged in 
disgrace from its temple and flung into the Dnie- 
per (this was in 992) and erected a Christian 
church where the temple had been. At the sug- 
gestion of missionaries, Vladimir instituted care- 
ful and systematic education. How different 


64 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


might have been Russia’s history if later em- 
perors had not put a stop to the education which 
was a natural accompaniment of Christian 
missions! 

Such, in very brief outline, is the story of the 
coming of the gospel to our forefathers in Europe. 
We may question some of the methods used and 
we may be disappointed at some of the results. 
It is certain that many thousands came into the 
Church from wrong motives. Often there were 
very considerable advantages connected with 
conversion or very serious disadvantages at- 
tached to remaining outside the Church. It is 
certain, also, that multitudes came into the Church 
without any reasonable idea of what it was all 
about. In fact, the missionaries themselves often 
held and preached very inadequate conceptions of 
Christianity. And, for the most part, no system- 
atic training of converts was undertaken. 

If Kurope had really become Christian, how 
very different must her life have been during the 
past centuries! It would not be a sorry tale of 
strife and jealousies and selfish ambitions and 
cruel wars that would be taught today as Huro- 
pean history, but a story of the conquering of 
nature and the development of arts and sciences 
for the sake of peaceful peoples and the building 
of brotherly life. Nevertheless, a little considera- 
tion will convince most of us that the ‘‘conver- 
sion’’ of Europe, even in the form in which it did 


THE CONVERSION OF EUROPE 65 


take place, meant an enormous advance. Dr. C. H. 
Robinson puts it whimsically when he says: 


In the beginning of the third century of the Christian era 
Dion Cassius, referring to the inhabitants of Britain, described 
them as an “idle, indolent, thievish, lying lot of scoundrels.” 
As a result of Christian teaching extending over fifty genera- 
tions, the proportion of the inhabitants of Britain to whom 
these epithets can justly be applied has perceptibly de- 
creased.® 


Aside from the direct religious results of medie- 
val missions, three very definite social results are 
claimed by Dr. Robinson; namely, the increased 
value set upon child life, the care of the sick and 
afflicted, and the abolition of slavery.’® In addition, 
as has been noted, the missionaries were largely 
responsible for the spread of agriculture and the 
peaceful arts, the beginnings of education and of 
literature, the lessening of cruelty, and the growth 
of justice and kindness. Dr. Robinson says again: 


At the time of the Christian era the whole Roman Empire 
did not contain a single hospital. The first of which any 
record exists, and which was the forerunner of those that are 
now to be found in almost every town in Christendom, was 
built at Rome by a Christian lady named Fabiola, in the 
fourth century. Another founded by the Christian emperor 
Valens at Caesarea dates from about 375. The French equiva- 
lent for hospital, Hétel-Dieu, suggests its Christian origin." 


9C. H. Robinson, History of Christian Missions, p. ix. 

10 How the Gospel Spread Through Hurope. 

110, H. Robinson, How the Gospel Spread Through Europe, p. 
173 f. 


66 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 
In summing up this period, Dr. Bliss says: 


Neither Greece nor Rome produced a single character of the 
type of Patrick, Columbanus, Boniface, or many of their asso- 
ciates. However ignorant and uncouth the masses of Central 
and Northern Europe, they far outshone in purity and 
nobility of life the corresponding masses of the best civiliza- 
tion that preceded them, and still more perhaps their own 
ancestors. 

Christianity had planted the seeds of growth. Whatever of 
intellectual, moral, social, civil, political development there is 
in Europe or America today can be traced directly to the 
labors of the missionaries of that time, while the Christian 
Church owes them a debt of gratitude scarcely less than it 
owes to the apostles who under God gave them their in- 
spiration. 

They furnished both an inspiration and a challenge to the 
modern Church in its advance to lands then practically un- 
known. If Christianity then, with the comparatively feeble 
and inadequate means at its command, could subdue such 
diverse and such hostile races as the Celts, Norsemen, Goths, 
Slavs, Magyars, it surely need not fear failure with any other. 
If almost single-handed its missionaries could do what those 
did, the modern missionary with the cordial, hearty support 
of a great Church behind him should accomplish much more. 


12H. M. Bliss, The Missionary Enterprise, p. 34. 


CHAPTER III 
BRINGING THE Cross To THE NEw Worip 


NE March day in the waning years of the 
fifteenth century a tiny, sea-battered boat 
making its way among the trim merchant 

vessels of many cities came to rest in the harbor 
of Palos, Spain. Gathering together the trophies 
of his voyage, ‘‘gold, cotton, strange beasts and 
birds, and two wild-eyed painted Indians,’’ the 
boat’s commander went off to Barcelona where 
the royal court was being held, to report to the 
sovereigns who had sent him forth. Soon amaz- 
ing news was running like fire along all the roads 
and up and down all the rivers. And wherever 
the story was told, it must have come as word of 
a great deliverance. 

For, generation after generation, like the in- 
habitants of some beleaguered city, western EKuro- 
peans had been watching relentless foes draw 
more and more narrowly the lines that shut them 
in from the rest of the world. Along the eastern 
border pressed the barbarian hordes that had 
again and again sent terror through the lands of 
the West. Southward and southeastward the 
fierce Ottoman Turks had drawn an impenetrable 
cordon. All Europe had trembled as the Moslem 
hosts hammered at Constantinople and finally 


broke the long resistance of the continent’s south- 
67 


68 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


eastern bulwark. So had been closed the last of 
the ancient routes to the much-needed spices and 
other treasures of the Indies. | 

To the west lay the barrier of a mighty, un- 
known ocean, invested by the common mind with 
all manner of terrors. But daring spirits must 
find a way out. In 1445 Portuguese ships, beating 
down the coast of Africa farther than any of their 
predecessors, had found a great river and fertile 
country where tradition had painted dreary 
desert. A new world had begun to appear before 
the eyes of men. In 1486 a Portuguese, Diaz, had 
rounded the southern end of that vast continent. 
There was, then, a possibility of a water route to 
the Indies. And then the great year, 1492! 
Armed with the newly acquired mariner’s com- 
pass and a conviction that the world was a globe, 
Columbus with his three tiny boats had dared the 
open ocean, sailing west in search of Japan and 
China. And now he was back, having found be- 
yond the great deep, fair lands of strange people 
and fabulous wealth. 

With an eagerness that is hard to picture, the 
boldest spirits of western Hurope poured out 
across the ocean path Columbus had traced or 
down along the older African route to launch such 
an age of exploration and conquest as the world 
had never seen before nor has seen since. Church 
and State united to speed Columbus back to the 
West with a great fleet of seventeen vessels and 


THE CROSS AND THE NEW WORLD _ 69 


express permission from the Pope to take posses- 
sion of the new lands for the Spanish crown. In 
1498 Da Gama sailed around the Cape of Good 
Hope, up the east coast, and across the Indian 
Ocean to India. A few years later the Portuguese 
reached Java, and in a few more they held pos- 
session of a great and rich empire in the Malay 
Archipelago. And only thirty years after Colum- 
bus found America a little ship that had started 
west three years before came sailing back from 
the east, having circled the globe. 

To none did the stirring news of those days 
bring more joy than to the authorities of the 
Church. Once mistress of the whole Western 
world, the Church had watched hosts of ‘‘infidels’’ 
overrun vast areas of her fairest territories until, 
for all her claim of world authority, she was shut 
up within very narrow bounds. Since the days 
of the evangelizing of Kurope there had been very 
little missionary activity on the part of the 
Roman Church. Now and then a few eager monks 
had set out for some eastern land. But the 
Church had been consolidating her position in 
western Hurope. She had become officially estab- 
lished in every land, alongside the government; 
and her claim of absolute authority over all men 
had been more and more accepted, until she had 
wielded by far the greatest power in Kurope and 
had been able to dictate to kings and emperors. 
Latterly her power had shown signs of waning 


70 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


and there was a rising tide of protest against the 
corruptions that had crept into the whole fabric 
of the Church. 

In Spain and Portugal, however, the Church 
was solidly established, and these were the lands 
that for geographical and other reasons led in 
the first great burst of exploration. The Pope 
was quick to put his blessing on the explorers of 
Spain and Portugal and generously divided be- 
tween them all the new land that might be found. 
So Portugal claimed vast dominions in the Kast, 
together with Brazil in South America; while 
Spain in a very few years overran all the rest of 
South America as well as Central America, Mex- 
ico, and a great part of what is now southwestern 
United States from the Gulf of Mexico to the 
Pacific and northward to Oregon. Florida and 
the islands were also Spain’s. And in all these 
areas the Church was quickly established. 

On his second voyage Columbus was accom- 
panied by twelve missionaries, led by a vicar 
apostolic. The first Christian chapel in the New 
World was built on the island of Haiti two years 
after its discovery. 

The rapidity of the outward extension of the 
Church in the New World was almost as amazing 
as the dazzling events of discovery and conquest. 
The subjugation of Mexico was completed in 1520. 
Within twenty years the Indians were nominally 
Christian, not only throughout what we now call 


THE CROSS AND THE NEW WORLD 71 


Mexico, but up through our own Southwest, all 
the way to the present Washington line. Through 
a great part of this vast region monasteries were 
founded, churches built, and the regular offices of 
the Roman Catholic Church carried out. No 
doubt much of this was superficial, but it did put 
an end to human sacrifices and other abominable 
practises. Within a century after Columbus’ 
voyages a Christian city had been founded in the 
heart of North America, in New Mexico, where in 
ten years there were eight thousand baptisms. 

In many other ways this was a strange kind of 
‘‘mission’’? work. It was not a case of mission- 
aries going by themselves to help far-away and 
needy people. The missionaries accompanied 
conquerors who were seeking gold and glory. 
Doubtless the conquerors thought of themselves 
also, sincerely enough, as missionaries of the 
Church, for it was quite customary in those days 
to establish the Church by the sword. 

Civil and ecclesiastical authorities at Madrid 
deliberately drew up a formal statement instruct- 
ing the invader of a new province to command the 
rulers and the people to acknowledge the Church, 
the Pope, and the sovereigns of Spain. If they 
refused, the invader was to tell them that by 
God’s help their land would be forcibly entered 
and they would be subjected to the Church and to 
the Spanish rulers. Further, they were to be told 
that their goods would be taken, that all the dam- 


72 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


age possible would be done to the people, and that 
they all—men, women, and children—would be 
taken into slavery and sold wherever it should 
please the Spanish sovereigns. One historian 
adds: ‘‘It was found necessary to the due train- 
ing of the Indians in the holy faith that they 
should be enslaved, whether or no.’’ 

There was, therefore, a terrible side to this 
‘‘conversion’’ of the natives. The conquerors 
wanted wealth with very little regard as to how 
they got it. They were cruel, greedy, selfish, and 
lustful. They seized the riches of the lands and 
put the inhabitants to work as serfs or slaves to 
make more wealth. Too often the priests were 
ready instruments in all this. In the perfidious 
betrayal of the Inca of Peru by the unprincipled 
Pizarro, a priest played an inglorious part. HEx- 
cept in rare instances the explorers did not 
demonstrate at all the Christian spirit, but they 
thought to extend Christianity by force. Under 
such treatment populations were decimated, and 
once noble races with high achievements were re- 
duced to a degradation from which they have not 
recovered even today. Millions of the descend- 
ants of these ancient peoples have not yet 
learned of the love of Christ. 

Against this intolerable crime in the name of 
religion were pitted the voices, lives, and labors 
of some of the noblest missionaries who ever 
lived. With Columbus on his third voyage came 


THE CROSS AND THE NEW WORLD 73 


Bartholomew de las Casas, a young man who was 
to be the first priest ordained in America. He 
eventually settled in Cuba. For a time he was a 
planter with Indian slaves working for him. But 
the cruel sufferings of the natives under the Span- 
ish yoke stirred his soul. To urge their cause he 
went to Spain where he was appointed ‘‘Protec- 
tor of the Indians’’ by King Ferdinand. It ought 
to be said that Queen Isabella again and again 
pleaded for kindly treatment of the Indians and 
that Ferdinand was evidently interested in the 
subject. 

The rest of Las Casas’ long life—he lived sixty- 
eight years after coming to America—was spent 
in tireless service for the Indians of the islands 
and the mainland. Often he interposed between 
the conquerors and the conquered, saving the na- 
tives from massacre. In the hope of delivering 
the Indians from enforced labor that was far be- 
yond their strength, he favored importing Negro 
labor from Africa, evidently thinking that Ne- 
eroes could endure the conditions more readily. 
This great mistake he came to regret bitterly be- 
fore he died. 

But in his life and spirit Las Casas was far 
beyond his day. ‘‘At a period when brute force 
was universally appealed to in all matters, but 
more especially in those that pertained to re- 
ligion, he contended before Juntas and royal 
councils that the missionary enterprise is a thing 


74 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


that should stand independent of all military sup- 
port, that a missionary should go forth with his 
life in his hand, relying only on the protection 
that God will vouchsafe him, and depending neither 
upon civil nor military assistance.’’* In any list 
of the world’s great missionaries Las Casas de- 
serves an honored place. 

In the very midst of the explorations and con- 
quests there broke forth in Europe the long- 
threatened revolt against the Church. Among its 
immediate results were the cleansing of the 
Church itself and the flaming up of a mighty mis- 
sionary enthusiasm, led by the newly formed So- 
ciety of Jesus. The older orders, too, like the 
I’ranciscans, who did so much of the early work 
in the New World, felt the power of the new im- 
pulse. 

From about the middle of the sixteenth century 
the Jesuits performed a tremendous service in 
South America. One of their greatest leaders 
was José de Anchieta. A brilliant lad in a Portu- 
guese university, he attracted the attention of the 
Jesuits, who put him into training. So severe 
was the strain of kneeling at eight masses a day 
that his body began to give way. With the in- 
domitable will that characterized his later life, he 
forced himself to continue until his spine was 
permanently injured and he became a hunchback. 


1C. H. Robinson, History of Christian Missions, p. 401. 


THE CROSS AND THE NEW WORLD 75 


At the age of twenty-one he went to Brazil, which 
was just then being colonized. He was delegated 
to start a little Jesuit college, the first classical 
school in America. In addition to all his other 
duties, he found time within a year to learn the 
Indians’ language and to write a Tupi grammar. 

Besides being teacher, Anchieta became physi- 
cian and laborer, musician, poet, dramatist, and 
above all, the fatherly pastor of the Indians. He 
learned how to make a tough shoe for the hard 
work of traveling through the wilds. The people 
were addicted to singing coarse songs. Arichieta 
wrote beautiful ones to take their places. He 
wrote and produced a drama to teach better ways 
of life. He composed splendid verse that became 
the foundation of Brazilian literature. 

In spite of physical handicap his industry knew 
no bounds. When there were no books in his 
school, he would laboriously copy off the advance 
lesson for each student, sometimes being found 
in the morning hard at work exactly where the 
students had left him the night before. He would 
accept no assistance for himself even when he 
was in pain, and his gaiety and friendliness made 
him beloved everywhere. 

Perhaps the act for which Anchieta is best 
known was his going voluntarily with two other 
Jesuits as a hostage to the embittered Indians 
who had finally determined to blot out the Portu- 
guese and be done with their slave-driving for- 


76 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


ever. Here for several years, often in imminent 
danger, Anchieta lived his quiet life of service 
and strove to maintain peace between Indians 
and settlers. 

The missionary settlements of the Jesuits along 
the valley of La Plata and the Amazon were 
called ‘‘Reductions.’’? In the early 1700’s they 
contained more than one hundred thousand in- 
habitants. Here the Indians were taught the arts 
of peace, and elementary education was universal 
among them. Indeed, the Jesuits in Paraguay 
wrote one of the outstanding chapters in the story 
of real attempts at human brotherhood in the 
peaceful and prosperous settlements they devel- 
oped against the opposition of pagan Indians and 
the hatred of slave-driving settlers. But it was 
not cheaply done. For decades there was scarcely 
a year without at least one martyrdom. What- 
ever one may think of some of the methods of 
these missionaries, one can but stand in homage 
before their devotion and their amazing courage. 


Gaspard de Monroy, baffled in one of his journeys by the 
obstinate ferocity of an Omagua chief, who not only rejected 
the gospel himself but threatened the most horrible death to 
the missionaries and to all who should embrace their doe- 
trine, . ... set out alone and entered the hut of the savage. 
“You may kill me,” said the father, with a tranquil air as soon 
as he stood in the presence of the barbarian, “but you will 
gain little honor by slaying an unarmed man. If, contrary to 
my expectation, you give me a hearing, all the adyantage will 


THE CROSS AND THE NEW WORLD (77 


be for yourself. If I die by your hand, an immortal crown 
awaits me in heaven.” Astonishment disarmed the savage, 
and admiration kept him silent. Then, with a kind of 
reluctant awe, he offered to his unmoved visitor a drink from 
his own cup. A little later he and his whole tribe were con- 
verted.” 2 


The suppression of the Society of Jesus in the 
eighteenth century gave the Spanish and Portu- 
guese settlers the long-desired opportunity to be 
rid of the troublous missionaries who had stood 
in the way of their oppression of the natives. To 
a very large extent the policy of ruthlessness 
triumphed. 

It is of interest to note that the first university 
in the New World was founded in 1538 in Santo 
Domingo, followed by one in Peru in 1551 and 
another in Mexico in 1553. The first of these 
dates was ninety-eight years before the founding 
of Harvard by the Pilgrims, and the third was 
ninety-seven years before Harvard received its 
regular charter. 


The French and the English, for various rea- 
sons, were much slower than the Spanish and the 
Portuguese in taking an active interest in the 
New World. But when they did start, they did 
it with vigor. Laying the foundations of Quebec 
in 1608, Champlain began to give effect to plans 


2 Quoted from T. W. Marshall’s Christian Missions in C. H. 
Robinson’s History of Christian Missions, p. 420. 


78 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


for a New France that had been formed long be- 
fore. With statesmanlike vision and great energy 
and courage the French extended their dominions. 
Their dream of empire followed the memorable 
explorations of La Salle up the St. Lawrence and 
the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi to the 
Gulf. In eighty years they had established them- 
selves thus through the heart of the continent. 
In a century and a half they held four fifths of 
North America. 

In France’s brilliant building of an empire in 
the Western continent, the missionary played a 
large and noble part. Far from seeking to estab- 
lish the Church by force, he went fearlessly and 
in love out into the wilderness to the most savage 
and hostile tribes. He shared the dangers of the 
unknown regions with the pioneer. The new and 
exposed settlements were to a great extent pro- 
tected by the influence of his love and sacrifice. 
Bacon, in his History of American Christianity, 
writes: ‘‘The annals of Christian martyrdom may 
be searched in vain for more heroic examples of 
devotion to the work of the gospel than those 
which adorn the history of the French Missions 
in North America.’’ To a remarkable extent the 
French were successful in winning the Indians 
to themselves and to their gospel. 

In 1610 Father Fléché, said to have been the 
first missionary to set foot in Canada, came to 
Champlain’s settlement. Within a year the local 


THE CROSS AND THE NEW WORLD 79 


Indian chief and all his tribe had become Chris- 
tians. Fléeché was followed by many of the 
choicest men and women the Church of France 
could send. Schools were started, monasteries 
built, churches established, and a very thorough 
missionary enterprise undertaken. A most suc- 
cessful work was carried on among the Hurons 
and Iroquois. Before Plymouth was founded 
French Christianity was at work in eastern 
Maine and northern New York, around Niagara 
and Lake Huron. As quickly as possible stations 
were established throughout the wide American 
possessions of France. Suddenly these splendid 
territories of the French were transferred to the 
English after the Seven Years’ War. The dream 
of a French empire in America ended, and after 
a few years there was not much to show for all 
the heroic labor of the French missionaries. 
More than a century after the Spanish and 
Portuguese began to take over what they con- 
sidered the richest parts of the New World, no 
permanent settlements had been made along the 
whole North Atlantic seaboard, from the border 
of Florida to Maine. And now there were to be 
established along that strip of coast such colonies 
as would have been impossible in Columbus’ time. 
When the great explorer sailed, the Roman 
Church was still the mightiest power in western 
Europe, dominating the people of all lands. One 
hundred years later practically every nation in 


80 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


northern Europe had broken with Rome and set 
up a church of its own, holding in greater or less 
degree the Pauline teaching of salvation by faith, 
and with the common people possessing the Bible 
in their own tongues. Jt was from these nations 
that the colonies along the North Atlantic shore 
were to come. 

In 1607, after numerous disastrous attempts, a 
permanent English colony was finally planted in 
Virginia, at Jamestown. With canvas for shelter, 
religious services were begun, and continued not 
only on Sunday but also every morning and even- 
ing, even when a large share of the colony con- 
sisted of worthless rascals. Remembering the 
colonization of Virginia as a commercial under- 
taking whose supporters hoped to reap large re- 
turns on their investment, we are likely to forget 
that the leading backers of the colony had a sin- 
cere religious purpose and were able in a time of 
crisis to appeal to the British public in behalf of 
an enterprise so full of hope for the furtherance 
of the gospel. The Virginia Company, that sent 
forth the Jamestown colony, was in large part a 
Puritan organization. Its leaders represented 
that party in the English Church which was striv- 
ing for reform. 

The Company made every effort to establish 
vital religion in the colony, selecting the gov- 
ernors and pastors with utmost care for that pur- 
pose. More than one of the governors labored 


THE CROSS AND THE NEW WORLD 81 


earnestly for the spiritual welfare, not only of 
the colonists, but also of the Indians. It was from 
one of them, Sir Thomas Dale, that Pocahontas 
received instruction in Christianity. He said that 
for the winning of that one soul he would consider 
his labors in America well spent. The Virginia 
Company would have welcomed the Pilgrims 
from Leyden as settlers at Jamestown, and did 
keep in close touch with them after they settled 
in Massachusetts. 

But in time the reactionary party under the 
Stuart kings gained the ascendency in England; 
the Company’s charter was revoked; and the 
king’s servants, the bishops, were able to dictate 
the church affairs of the colony of Virginia. All 
too generally they filled church offices with un- 
worthy men. Religion in the colony fell into a 
bad way. Non-conformists were persecuted and 
driven out—to be welcomed by the Catholic gov- 
ernors of Maryland! Years later Quakers, Pres- 
byterians, Baptists, and Methodists helped revive 
Christianity in Virginia and other southern 
colonies. 

Two years after Jamestown was founded 
Henry Hudson, in the service of a Dutch com- 
mercial company, explored the river that bears 
his name. Soon enterprising Dutch merchants 
had developed trading posts on Manhattan and 
along the Hudson and Delaware Rivers. Coloni- 
zation began very soon after Plymouth was set- 


82 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


tled and, under the control of the powerful Dutch 
West India Company and then of the Dutch Gov- 
ernment, a prosperous commercial state was de- 
veloped. In 1626 services of worship were held 
above the horse-mill in Manhattan. ‘Two years 
later the little village welcomed a minister, Jonas 
Michaelius, who was able to gather fifty communi- 
eants for the Lord’s Supper and to organize them 
into a Reformed Church. The Collegiate Church 
of New York City has had a continuous history 
from the days of New Amsterdam. 

The cosmopolitan character, even in its very 
early days, of the city that was to become New 
York is attested by the fact that, by the middle of 
the 1600’s, Manhattan is known to have contained 
Calvinists, Catholics, English Puritans, Luther- 
ans, Anabaptists, and others, in addition to ad- 
herents of the Dutch Reformed faith. Despite 
the persecuting tendencies of one or two over- 
zealous governors, the Dutch in general brought 
to America the tremendous hatred of persecution 
and the love of liberty gained in their long and 
heroic struggle against the mighty power of 
Spain. Britain eventually asserted her claim to 
New Netherland and overcame the Dutch Colonial 
Government. The Church of England became the 
established church of New York. 


Of the great moments in the history of the hu- 
man race, surely one of the greatest was in the 


THE CROSS AND THE NEW WORLD — 83 


crowded cabin of the Mayflower, tossing in a 
wintry sea off the unknown coast of Massa- 
chusetts on the evening of November 21, 1620. A 
flickering light made weird shadows in the cor- 
ners of the little room and brought out the strong 
faces of earnest men as one by one they signed 
their names to a document ‘‘in the presence of 
God and one of another, covenanting and combin- 
ing themselves together into a civil body politic.’’ 

The little company had already been exiles in 
a foreign land for twelve years and had now come 
to an uncultivated and hostile shore to maintain 
its own life and to worship God according to its 
own conscience. Here, without asking leave of 
ruler or governor, a majority of the men of the 
company formed themselves into a state. In like 
manner they set up in the new land a church that 
did not derive its authority from any church in 
Europe, but in which the members bound them- 
selves together to worship and serve God, and in 
which ordination to the ministry came from the 
people of the church itself. 

The Pilgrims soon had as near neighbors a 
large and flourishing colony of Puritans who had 
not separated from the Church of England. 
Hight years after the landing at Plymouth came 
a pioneering party who, with those who remained 
from an earlier settlement, formed the town of 
Salem (meaning ‘‘peace’’). A royal charter was 
secured, establishing what amounted to a free 


84 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


commonwealth in the wilderness. The next year 
came six vessels with four hundred people and 
ample tools and equipment. The increasing per- 
secution of Puritans in England worked out 
strangely for the good of Massachusetts. In 
1630 the officers of the company that held the 
royal charter brought their charter to America, 
and Massachusetts became practically an inde- 
pendent republic. By the end of ten years from 
that date some twenty-one thousand Englishmen, 
or four thousand families, had migrated to Massa- 
chusetts in three hundred ships, at a cost of some- 
thing like a million dollars. 

These Puritans had been bitter opponents of 
the Separatists in England, but in America they 
not only became fast friends of the colony at Ply- 
mouth but soon adopted the same church policy. 
A service was held in which the first ministers 
were chosen by ballot and inducted into office 
with prayer and the laying on of hands. Congre- 
gationalism, supported by public funds, became 
the established form of church life in Massa- 
chusetts. The people were quick to build 
churches, and in a remarkably short time had set 
up Harvard College, particularly to educate 
leaders for the churches. 

A state in which the church is practically in- 
distinguishable from the government is not likely 
to remain long a pleasant place for everybody. 
Groups of people soon began to break away from 


THE CROSS AND THE NEW WORLD — 85 


Massachusetts and form other settlements in New 
England. Sometimes whole churches under the 
leadership of their pastors would migrate. So, 
under very able men, were established the New 
Haven Colony and the Hartford Colony, the lat- 
ter with what has been called ‘‘the first example 
in history of a written constitution—a distinct 
organic law constituting a government and de- 
fining its powers.’’ This document was to have a 
notable place in the history of free constitutions 
in America. 

A number of exiles from Massachusetts found 
refuge in New Hampshire, where little settle- 
ments for fishing and other purposes had been 
made very early and where colonization by Eng- 
lish Puritans had been vigorously encouraged. 
Fleeing from Massachusetts, in the dead of win- 
ter, to friendly Indians with whom he had evi- 
dently made previous arrangements, Roger 
Williams planned to establish an Indian mission. 
Then he thought of a refuge for others who had 
diffeulty in getting along with the established 
colonies. It was not long before he had as neigh- 
bors Mrs. Ann Hutchinson and some of her fol- 
lowers, banished from Massachusetts for what 
was called heresy. Finally Williams conceived the 
daring project of a state where everyone would 
be welcome and free, no matter what might be his 
or her religious convictions. Quakers persecuted 
in Massachusetts and New Netherland, Baptists 


86 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


fleeing from various places, and numerous other 
kinds of folk, some of them not very helpful, 
found a haven in Rhode Island and Providence 
Plantations. To attempt such a state was a heroic 
undertaking. There were troubles within and 
persecutions from the other New England settle- 
ments. But Williams and his friends finally suc- 
ceeded and the little colony made an altogether 
incalculable contribution to the cause of real re- 
ligion and the development of free institutions. 

Even before the founding of Rhode Island 
there was established a colony that was soon to 
declare religious liberty. Maryland was planned 
by Lord Baltimore as a home for Roman Catholics 
who were being persecuted in England. When 
the Catholics were slow in coming, the proprietor, 
who had a huge real estate project on his hands, 
offered a haven to persecuted people of whatever 
faith, especially inviting some Puritans for whom 
the royal governor of Virginia was making life 
hard. Quakers as well as Presbyterians pros- 
pered in Maryland. It may be remarked that 
when the Protestants came to be in the majority 
in the colony, they were not overgenerous toward 
the Roman Catholics. Eventually, as in numer- 
ous other colonies, the Church of England was 
officially established. 

The Gloria Dei Church in Philadelphia and the 
Old Swedes Church in Wilmington remain today 
as monuments to one of the purest attempts to 


THE CROSS AND THE NEW WORLD 87 


bring Christianity to America. The great Prot- 
estant leader, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, for 
years cherished the hope of planting a colony that 
would be ‘‘a blessing to the common man as well 
as to the whole Protestant world.’’ After his 
lamented death in the Battle of Liitzen in 1632, 
men of like spirit attempted to carry out his pur- 
poses in Delaware. Almost within the area of 
what is now Philadelphia, forty years before the 
coming of William Penn, the beloved Swedish 
Lutheran pastor, John Campanius, was preaching 
the gospel in two languages, to his countrymen 
and to the Delaware Indians. The Swedish 
colony was soon captured by the Dutch, the Dutch 
power, in turn, was overthrown by the English, 
and the fine Swedish population was absorbed into 
the common stock of the colonies. 

There was a long gap in the founding of 
colonies while things were unsettled in England. 
Then Charles II, restored to the throne of his 
fathers, bestowed the Carolinas on favorite 
friends, who promptly opened up immense real 
estate developments. The Church of England 
was made the established church and attracted 
many of its members, while numerous kinds of 
dissenters poured in, in response to the promise 
of liberty of conscience to all. All the later 
colonies offered religious liberty from the outset. 

North Carolina was settled largely from the 
other colonies. Puritans, ill-treated in Virginia, 


88 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


crossed over into the Carolinas. Quakers had a 
tremendous influence and early in the eighteenth 
century were reckoned to form one seventh of the 
population. Among the Quaker missionaries to 
the southern colonies should be mentioned John 
Woolman, a true apostle of Jesus Christ. 

South Carolina was settled direct from Europe. 
Some of the earliest American Baptists are to be 
found here. They came from England. Later 
they were joined by a Baptist church from the 
Massachusetts Colony. ‘T'wo shiploads of Dutch 
Calvinists came very early from New York. 
French Huguenots came in large numbers and 
built their religious fidelity and devotion into the 
foundation of the colony. An influx of Scotch- 
Irish Presbyterians, coming a little later, had 
marked influence on the life of South Carolina. 
Among the great names in her history a very 
large number have been either French or Scotch. 
Lutherans also came to the Carolinas. 

When the colonies of New Haven and Hartford 
united to form Connecticut, the plan of agreement 
seemed to some of the members of the New Haven 
colony to give up precious things, so a whole town 
and chureh, headed by the pastor, left all that 
they had won by thirty years’ toil, and migrated 
to New Jersey, there to found the city of Newark. 
They were joined by other Puritans from New 
England. Then they acquired as neighbors a 
very considerable number of Scotch Covenanters, 


THE CROSS AND THE NEW WORLD _ 89 


especially when the bitter persecutions of James 
IT drove out many of the best people of northern 
Britain. Of course, the Dutch had been in New 
Jersey since the earliest days of Dutch coloniza- 
tion. The long-persecuted Quakers began to find 
a home when Quaker proprietors came into pos- 
session of West Jersey and later of Hast Jersey 
also. They proclaimed, ‘‘We lay a foundation 
for after ages to understand their liberty as men 
and Christians, that they may not be brought into 
bondage but by their own consent; for we put the 
power in the people.’’ *® 

William Penn, a devoted Quaker, who somehow 
remained a favorite of the corrupt courts of the 
last two Stuarts, was called in to settle some diffi- 
culty in New Jersey. He was inspired to con- 
ceive a ‘‘Holy Experiment,’’ as he called it. The 
king owed Penn a large debt which there was no 
chance of his ever recovering. He tactfully ar- 
ranged to receive instead a huge domain in 
America, with practically unlimited rights of 
jurisdiction. He invited colonists, promising 
civil and religious liberty and voluntarily offer- 
ing to turn all his power over to the people. Land 
was offered at forty shillings for a hundred acres 
and a small quit-rent. Through the Friends’ cor- 
respondence the news spread afar. Word soon 
reached the oppressed groups on the Continent. 


8 Quoted in L. W. Bacon, History of American Christianity, 
p. lll. 


90 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


The response was tremendous. In 1683 Phila- 
delphia consisted of three or four cottages; two 
years later it contained about six hundred houses 
and boasted a school and a printing press. By 
the end of the century it was a thriving town. 

Large groups of Mennonites and other perse- 
cuted sects came from Germany, especially fugi- 
tives from the Palatinate who became the fore- 
fathers of the ‘‘Pennsylvania Dutch.’’ There 
were later migrations from the Lutheran and Re- 
formed Churches of Germany. Colonial Pennsyl- 
vania came to consist of about one third Quakers, 
one third Germans, and one third miscellaneous, 
of whom many were Welsh. 

From a Christian point of view the last of the 
original colonies, Georgia, founded long after the 
others, in 1733, had one of the noblest conceptions 
of all. General James Oglethorpe, after a dis- 
tinguished military service, entered Parliament 
at a very early age and began a career as a social 
reformer, almost single-handed. The shocking 
condition of those who were imprisoned for debt 
stirred him deeply. Not content with relief 
measures in England, he projected a colony where 
these unfortunates could make a new start in life. 
All who were persecuted for their faith in any 
land would also be welcome. Whereas some col- 
onies were business ventures, this was an enter- 
prise of philanthropy. Oglethorpe, as governor, 


THE CROSS AND THE NEW WORLD 91 


and the trustees of the territory served without 
pay, and Parliament voted ten thousand pounds 
to promote the work—the only government sub- 
sidy granted to any colony. Among the many 
groups attracted to Georgia were Moravians, 
communicants of a church which was already em- 
barking on foreign missionary endeavors that 
were to write a glorious chapter in the history of 
Christianity. 

So were established the colonies that were to 
grow into the United States of America. It 
would be unfair to leave the impression that they 
were entirely founded by religious people and for 
high Christian purposes; far from it! All sorts 
and conditions of men came to the New World, 
and from all sorts of motives. Ambition, greed, 
bigotry, as well as the ordinary desire to get 
ahead in the world, all played their part in the 
early life of the colonies. 

On the other hand, any interpretation of the 
founding of these colonies: that leaves out the 
great religious purposes which animated the out- 
standing leaders and upheld thousands of the 
common folk simply ignores some of the most 
patent facts of history. In every colony the re- 
ligious motive was present and in most of them 
it was dominant. As good an authority as Ban- 
croft, in summing up the story of the colonial 
period, says: 


92 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


Our fathers were not only Christians but almost unani- 
mously they were Protestants. The school that bows to the 
senses as the sole interpreter of truth, had little share in 
colonizing our America. The colonists from Maine to Caro- 
lina, the adventurous companions of Smith, the Puritan felons 
that freighted the fleet of Winthrop, the Quaker outlaws that 
fled from jails with a Newgate prisoner as their sovereign— 
all had faith in God and in the soul. 


As a matter of fact many of the strongest ele- 
ments in the making of America were groups who 
came distinctly for religious reasons. For the 
most part the rulers of northern Hurope had no 
more idea of letting the people choose their own 
religion than had the Roman Church. There were 
authoritative state churches to which everyone 
must conform or suffer. So life was made un- 
bearable for many thousands whose minds or con- 
sciences would not let them conform. They were 
likely to be among the ablest and best people of 
the land. Yet for generations the short-sighted 
policy of rulers drove them to seek eseape. And 
during those generations the American colonies 
offered room and opportunities for all. So there 
came to the colonies great companies of men and 
women whom any government might have re- 
joiced to claim as citizens. 

We have seen them founding Plymouth, Massa- 
setts Bay, and other colonies. We have seen them 
in large numbers seeking a haven in already 


4 Quoted in Clark, Leavening the Nation, p. 19. 


THE CROSS AND THE NEW WORLD — 93 


established colonies, Baptists and Quakers, Men- 
nonites and Dunkers, thousands of refugees from 
the Palatinate, and French Huguenots, escaped 
from long suffering. All these built their sterling 
qualities into the very bedrock of America’s 
character. 

One of the most numerous and valuable of these 
immigrations was that of the Scotch, the Irish, 
and the Scotch-Irish, especially in the years 1665- 
1685, when they were bitterly persecuted by 
Charles Il. For twenty years they landed at the 
rate of twelve thousand a year in Philadelphia 
alone. hey settled largely in New Jersey, Penn- 
sylvania, Maryland, and North Carolina, and 
formed an element of great strength in the rising 
ehurches of the new land as well as in the long 
struggle for liberty and the establishing of free 
institutions. 

While all these peoples were establishing a 
civilization in the New World, what did their com- 
ing mean to the original inhabitants along the 
Atlantic coast? The avowed purpose of many of 
the earliest settlers, expressed again and again, 
was to do the Indians good. As early as the reign 
of Edward VI (1547-1553) instructions had been 
issued to navigators that ‘‘the sowing of Chris- 
tianity must be the chief interest of such as shall 
make any attempt at foreign discovery.”’ 

The first charter for an English colony in 
America, granted a quarter century before James- 


94 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


town, refers to the compassion of God ‘‘for poor 
infidels, it seeming probable that God hath re- 
served these Gentiles to be introduced into Chris- 
tian civility by the English nation.’’ ® 

The baptism of an Indian by the English is 
recorded twenty years before the founding of 
Jamestown, during one of the numerous unsuc- 
cessful attempts at settlement. <A large contribu- 
tion for missionary work in America was made 
the next year. Sir Walter Raleigh gave one hun- 
dred pounds to the Virginia Company ‘‘for the 
propagation of the Christian religion in that 
settlement.’’ 

The Pilgrims and Puritans professed that the 
winning of the Indians to Christ was one of the 
chief purposes of their colonies, and they soon 
took measures to spread Christianity among the 
natives. Perhaps the greatest of the early mis- 
sionaries to the Indians was John Eliot, a young 
graduate of Cambridge, who became pastor of the 
church in Roxbury, Massachusetts, eleven years 
after the landing of the Pilgrims. Much im- 
pressed by the need of the natives, he gave him- 
self for fourteen years to the study of the Algon- 
quin language. The wigwam of a friendly chief 
was the setting for his first sermon to the Indians 
in 1646. A movement of Indians toward Christ 
began almost at once. Soon a civilized Indian 


5 Quoted in C. H. Robinson, History of Christian Missions, p. 
68. 


THE CROSS AND THE NEW WORLD = 9 


community was rising in the wilderness, with the 
people governing themselves by laws of their own 
making and eagerly learning agriculture and in- 
dustry, and with the children attending school. 

Kliot’s work extended farther and farther into 
the wilderness. Soon there came opposition and 
persecution, and he was glad for a grant of land 
near Boston on which to gather the Christian In- 
dians. ' There they built a Christian community, 
which they called ‘‘Natick,’’ binding themselves 
by this covenant: 


The grace of Christ helping us, we do give ourselves and 
our children to God to be his people. He shall rule over us in 
all our affairs, not only in our religion and the affairs of the 
church, but also in all our works and affairs of this world.® 


By 1671 some thirty-six hundred converted In- 
dians had been gathered into fourteen of these 
‘‘praying towns,’’ Thirty years from the found- 
ing of Natick the Christian Indians numbered 
eleven thousand. Along with his increasing 
labors Eliot kept up a work of translation, finally 
making the Bible and other books available for the 
Indians in their own tongue.’ 

Moved largely by Eliot’s labors, Puritan min- 
isters of England and Scotland urged Parliament 
to undertake measures to win the Indians to the 


6 From Winners of the World, quoted by R. H. Glover in The 
Progress of World-Wide Missions, p. 86. 

7Some $33,000 was recently paid in England for an original 
copy of one of these books. 


96 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


Christian faith. The result was ‘‘The Society for 
the Propagation of the Gospel in New England.”’ 
Collections for the Society’s work of preaching 
and. of educating Indian children were ordered to 
‘be taken throughout all towns and parishes. The 
first collection amounted to $60,000,.a fine sum for 
those days. 

Among those who followed in Eliot’s footsteps 
was Roger Williams, who very early learned the 
Indian tongue and worked among the natives. 
Five generations of the Mayhew family, begin- 
ning in 1641 and carrying on until 1806, min- 
istered to the Indians of Martha’s Vineyard, Nan- 
tucket, and the Elizabeth Isles off the coast of 
Massachusetts. Other very early missionaries to 
the Indians were Alexander Whitaker, called the 
‘‘Apostle of Virginia,’’ and Thomas Dale, of the 
same colony, Campanius among, the Swedish 
Lutherans, and the sterling Dutch Dominie, Mega- 
polensis, who, when religion was in anything but 
a flourishing state in New Netherland, carried on 
a great labor of love among the natives of a large 
section near Albany. 

The devastating King Philip’s War broke up 
John Eliot’s work and left him an old man amid 
the ruins of the great edifice he had seen arising. 
So, in place after place, tragedy befell the most 
hopeful missions to the Indians. It was perhaps 
inevitable that clashes should come between the 
Indians’ old way of life and that of the colonists. 


THE CROSS AND THE NEW WORLD 97 


But there seems abundant evidence that had a 
really Christian plan been worked out, the Indian 
could have been won to a great share in the new 
states that were being built. However, no ade- 
quate plan was ever made for him to have a place 
in the life of his own land. And as the colonies 
developed, he was again and again pushed back. 

Yet every revival of religion brought a new in- 
terest in the welfare of the native Americans. 
When toward the middle of the 1700’s the ‘‘Great 
Awakening’’ stirred the churches to new life, it 
seemed again that the Indians might all be won to 
Christianity and civilized ways of living. Pastors 
and evangelists took large numbers of Indians 
into the churches. So zealously was Christ 
preached among them that in whole sections 
heathenism appeared to die out among the na- 
tives. The great Jonathan Edwards, Wiulam 
Tennant of Log College fame, and other very 
able leaders of the Church were active in seek- 
ing the Indians. 

But the most famous missionary of this revival 
period was David Brainerd. In four years of ac- 
tive ministry he accomplished a memorable suc- 
cess and lived with such apostolic zeal that the 
spiritual influence of his life extended through 
generations and into many lands. He labored in 
Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Of 
his work in the last state it has been written, ‘‘His 
success here was perhaps without a parallel in 


98 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


heathen missions since the days of the apostles.’ 
Burning out his life before he was thirty, he be- 
came the inspiration of Henry Martyn, who went 
to live gloriously a few brief years in India and 
Persia, leaving likewise a deathless heritage. 
William Carey also received much of his impetus 
from the life of David Brainerd, as have many 
missionaries since. 

Of all the noble missionaries who in nearly 
every colony loved the Indians with a great love 
and sought them for Christ, it is impossible to 
mention even the names here. As the Indians 
were pushed westward, earnest men followed them 
into the wilderness to try to give them the true 
knowledge of the God whom the white men often 
so poorly served. 

These servants of Christ often had to stand be- 
tween the Indians and the selfishness of the white 
settlers, and in the end their work was largely 
frustrated by the unscrupulous greed of their 
fellow-colonists who professed themselves Chris- 
tian. There are no finer pages in the long story of 
missions than those that record their loving and 
often heroic service. The dreams of these pioneer 
missionaries to the Indians are still unfulfilled, 
but many faithful workers are following in their 
footsteps and their visions may yet be realized. 

On the momentous day when the colonies de- 
clared themselves an independent nation there 
had been more years of American colonial history 


THE CROSS AND THE NEW WORLD — 99 


than there have been of national history since 
then. In those long years the churches were be- 
ing prepared for the great tasks that lay ahead. 
There is room here barely to mention two or three 
outstanding items in the preparation. 

The various branches of the church were firmly 
organized, established, and extended. An appeal 
for help from persons of the Reformed faith in 
Maryland to the Presbytery of Laggan, Ireland, 
in 1683, brought over Francis Makemie. He be- 
came a tireless missionary in Maryland and Vir- 
ginia, and was instrumental in bringing over other 
Presbyterian ministers and building up many 
churches. Under his leadership was formed the 
first Presbytery in America, at Philadelphia, in 
1706. A few years later there were enough Pres- 
byteries to organize a Synod. In like manner 
were organized and extended the Lutherans, the 
Reformed churches, the Friends, and many others. 
Colleges were built to train men for the ministry. 

After the Revolution many of the churches had 
to face very difficult years of readjustment. This 
was particularly true of the churches that had 
been closely tied to the mother country, such as 
the Episcopal and the Methodist. Gradually 
also the churches that had been tax-supported had 
to learn to live without state aid. They did learn; 
more than that, they learned to carry their share 
in the great home mission task. 

There was, too, a spiritual preparation of the 


100 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


churches. The first powerful American revival, 
known as the ‘‘Great Awakening,’’ had a pro- 
found effect on life in the colonies. The initial 
force of religion had waned as the hard days of 
the early settlers had passed and an easier man- 
ner of life had come. Dominie Frelinghuysen of 
New Brunswick, New Jersey, Jonathan Hdwards 
of Northampton, Massachusetts, and other lead- 
ers began to preach a religion of power and moral 
earnestness. The response was immediate and 
widespread. 

Then came George Whitefield. He had been a 
companion of Wesley in the famous ‘‘ Holy Club”’ 
in Oxford. One of the most eloquent and power- 
ful preachers in the whole history of the Church, 
he toured the colonies almost from one end to the 
other, preaching to vast congregations. Churches 
were stirred to their depths, many thousands were 
converted, pastors were quickened to more earnest 
effort. Altogether, in spite of many extrava- 
gances, there was a great new birth of religious 
faith and life. And as usual in such cases, mis- 
sionary enthusiasm was awakened. One of the 
first results of Whitefield’s preaching in the South 
was a practical movement to teach the slaves, who 
up to that time had largely maintained the miser- 
able fetish worship of Africa. Increased efforts 
to reach the Indians were made in many places. 

The Methodist movement, with its insistence on 
the vital experience of salvation and on holy liv- 


THE CROSS AND THE NEW WORLD © 101 


ing, made a powerful contribution to the religious 
life of the colonies. Starting in England in the 
middle of the 1700’s, it soon reached America. 
Francis Asbury, the great circuit rider, became 
head of the Methodist Church in the colonies and 
by his wisdom and devotion and remarkable 
ability rendered an incalculable service to Ameri- 
ean Christianity. Under his leadership was built 
up that system of itinerant preaching that was to 
play so great a part in reaching the frontier dis- 
tricts for Christ. No wonder that the debt of 
America to the circuit rider is recognized by the 
erection of Asbury’s statue in Washington. 

One other great achievement of the colonial 
period was the winning of religious freedom and 
the separation of Church and State. Perhaps it 
was natural that the Reformation should thus be 
earried to its logical conclusion in America where 
people of so many different opinions had sought 
homes. Those who had fled from persecution in 
Europe were not likely to submit easily to re- 
ligious oppression in America. Nearly every 
denomination had a share in the struggle for free- 
dom. It was a long and hard fight and many suf- 
fered bitterly in the course of it, but at last the 
victory was written into the first amendment to 
the Constitution of the United States. So, as the 
new nation was born there was a free Church in a 
free land. There awaited it such a task as no 
state church ever could have performed. 


CHAPTER IV 
THe WINNING oF AMERICA 


MERGING after weary weeks from the dim 
iy semi-daylight of the tangled forests where 
they had silently followed the blazed trails 
and built their fires carefully in hidden spots for 
fear of lurking Indians, a little company of men, 
women, and children gazed in wonder on the smil- 
ing beauty of the blue-grass country. It was bet- 
ter than the visions they had seen as they had sat 
spellbound around the great fireplaces of their 
Virginia foothill cabins, drinking in the words of 
that mighty hunter, Daniel Boone. They had not 
been wrong when they had left behind the homes 
they had won through years of labor in that rough 
country and, with the meagerest possessions— 
some seed for sowing, a few essential tools and 
household belongings, a number of horses and cat- 
tle—had followed the ‘‘long hunter’’ as he turned 
his face to the West again, at the first signs of 
spring, and started the toilsome journey on foot 
over the trackless ranges to his great hunting 
grounds. 

In the year that the embattled farmers of Lex- 
ington and Concord launched the struggle which 
was to win freedom for the American common- 
wealths along the Atlantic shore, these frontiers- 


men laid the foundations of a commonwealth 
102 


THE WINNING OF AMERICA 103 


beyond the Alleghenies. As a matter of fact the 
beginnings of the first commonwealth west of the 
mountains were already flourishing. As early as 
1769 a certain William Bean had built a cabin in 
what is now eastern Tennessee. So eagerly did 
homeseekers follow him from Pennsylvania, 
Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas that three 
years later a constitution was drawn up and 
adopted by the ‘‘ Watauga Association’’ of set- 
tlers along the headwaters of the Tennessee’ 
River. 

Thus, during the very years when the colonies 
were becoming a nation, the pioneer spirit that 
had brought them into being burst over their 
western barrier and started the new nation on a 
great career. America’s destiny was not fulfilled 
in the winning of independence—America was just 
begun. The hope, the freedom, the opportunities, 
the home after their heart’s desire, that had 
beckoned men and women westward over perilous 
leagues of ocean were to beckon them farther and 
farther west over all manner of obstacles. And 
the high purposes and ideals that had come with 
the brave from many lands, and the religious and 
political liberty that had been won in the New 
World were to have a mighty theater for their ful- 
filment. 

The treaty that ended the Revolution estab- 
lished the western boundary of the United States 
at the Mississippi River. What could the young 


104 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


republic do, one might have asked, with a terri- 
tory several times the size of any land in Kurope 
except Russia? Yet, even as the treaty was being 
signed, stout-hearted pioneers were making a 
start on the herculean undertaking of possessing 
the new lands beyond the mountains, lands into 
which could have been fitted almost exactly the 
areas of Great Britain and Ireland, France, and 
the Austrian Monarchy, as those nations stood at 
that day. 

With the establishment of peace, so great a 
tide set over the ranges that the first national 
census, taken seven years later, found thirty-five 
thousand settlers in Tennessee and seventy-three 
thousand in Kentucky. In another two years 
Kentucky was added to the states along the 
Atlantic as a full-fledged member of the Union; 
four years later Tennessee likewise became a 
state, while the second census, in 1800, reported 
nearly a third of a million people in the two new 
commonwealths. By that time tens of thousands 
were pouring into another vast frontier area. 

The region north of the Ohio, closed at first by 
the ferocity with which the Indians repelled all 
invaders, had been opened in 1787 by action of the 
Continental Congress. Government protection 
against Indians was promised, land was offered 
free to Revolutionary soldiers in lieu of pay, and 
the system of territorial government was set up 
looking toward the development of new states. 


THE WINNING OF AMERICA 105 


The famous Ordinance of 1787 forbade slavery 
forever in the Northwest Territory, guaranteed 
the right to worship according to conscience, and 
strongly encouraged ‘‘schools and the means of 
education.”’ 

The next year Marietta, Ohio, was founded by 
a company of New Englanders who had built a 
large, ungainly barge at the headwaters of the 
Ohio River, christened it the Mayflower, and then, 
like many thousands who were to follow, had en- 
trusted themselves and their possessions to the 
westward flowing waters, making no provision for 
away toreturn. A few years later Moses Cleave- 
land began the settlement of the region along 
Lake Erie. He was rapidly followed by thou- 
sands, especially from Connecticut. Multitudes 
poured into the Northwest Territory from many 
states, including the recently settled frontiers of 
Kentucky and Tennessee. By 1800 there were 
fifty thousand settlers. Three years later Ohio 
became a state. The census of 1820 reported two 
million inhabitants west of the Alleghenies. 

What a heroic undertaking confronted the 
statesmen of the young republic, to lay sound 
foundations for national life amid such breath- 
taking expansion! And to make sure that all that 
was most precious in America’s heritage was not 
only preserved but given the chance for greater 
development in the new commonwealths that were 
arising almost overnight, here was as tremendous 


106 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


a challenge as ever came to those who care for 
the things of the spirit. While the multitudes of 
pioneers were staking out claims for themselves 
and carrying on the prodigious labor of wresting 
homes from the wilderness, some were claiming 
new sections for Christ and throwing their lives 
with abandon into making good the claim. 

In the eager trains of frontiersmen toiling on 
foot up the rough mountain slopes and pouring 
over the passes into the first Tennessee settle- 
ments was one whose old gray horse bore an un- 
usual burden, a sackful of books. Samuel Doak, 
minister of the gospel, educated at Princeton, had 
walked the long miles across Maryland and Vir- 
einia in order to throw in his lot with the hardy 
frontier folk. Through the crucial formative 
years of the new country he was to be a most 
powerful influence. 

The Declaration of Independence was only a 
year old when this ‘‘apostle of learning and re- 
ligion in the Southwest’’ founded Salem Church 
in a log house near Jonesboro, Tennessee. In the 
very midst of the Revolution he opened Martin’s 
Academy, a log high school, which later grew into 
Washington College. And George Washington 
was still president of the nation whose freedom 
he had done so much to win when Samuel Doak 
founded Tusculum Academy, which was to grow 
into Tuseulum College. 

Three years after the Ordinance that opened 


THE WINNING OF AMERICA 107 


the Northwest Territory, a church was organized 
by a group of Baptists at Columbia, near Cin- 
cinnati. Three years later they erected a church 
building. Two of the first acts of the company 
that founded Marietta were the staking out of a 
parsonage lot and the setting aside of two town- 
ships for a university. The people who followed 
Moses Cleaveland into the ‘‘Western Reserve’’ 
largely took their churches with them; in thirty 
years ninety churches were planted in that area. 

In this religious pioneering men and women of 
many denominations shared. Methodists, Bap- 
tists, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists all 
labored valiantly to see that the church was 
planted in the new communities. Perhaps the first 
Christian service of worship in Kentucky was held 
in Boonesborough, the first settlement, by a min- 
ister of the Church of England. The first mis- 
sionary to the white settlers of that commonwealth 
may have been Joseph Rodgers, a Dunker—that 
is, a member of one of the persecuted sects that 
had found haven in Penn’s colony. The denomi- 
nation known as United Brethren did not come 
into being till shortly before the Revolution. Yet 
by 1808 John Pfrimmer, a member of that Church, 
together with his associates had established a line 
of mission stations all the way from Pennsylvania 
to the western border of Indiana. In that year he 
settled in southern Indiana, then practically an 
unbroken wilderness with almost no roads. In 


108 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


constant labors and long missionary tours he 
helped establish the church in the very beginnings 
of a wide area. 

But the task of keeping religion and education 
abreast of the frontier was a staggering one, not 
only because the borders moved with such start- 
ling rapidity, but because of the perils attendant 
on frontier life. The subduing of a wilderness is 
inevitably rough work. It strains all the powers 
of those who engage in it and leaves little time or 
energy for things of the spirit. The constant 
struggle for physical necessities is likely to induce 
a materialistic attitude toward life. Moreover, 
there is generally very little money for schools 
and churches. Hence, nearly every frontier faces 
the danger of mental and spiritual illiteracy and 
poverty, while many face a desperate struggle for 
the very preservation of the moral life itself. 
Among those who go to the borders of civilization 
are not a few who are glad to leave religion be- 
hind. And there are likely to be some wild char- 
acters who want to be free from all law and order. 
Into one county in Kentucky fled so many fugi- 
tives from justice from all parts of the Union that 
the county came to be called ‘‘Rogues’ Harbor,’’ 
and the inhabitants who wanted a decent order of 
things were actually defeated in a pitched battle 
‘fought with guns, pistols, dirks, knives, and 
clubs.’’ | 

But into that county soon came James Mc- 


THE WINNING OF AMERICA 109 


Gready, to take charge of several Presbyterian 
churches and to arouse men and women to re- 
ligious earnestness by his powerful preaching. A 
little later hundreds of families gathered from far 
and near to a spot in the same county to listen to 
the preaching of two brothers, William and John 
McGee, one a Methodist and one a Presbyterian, 
who had come through Tennessee and Kentucky 
stirring whole sections to new spiritual life. 
Kager to hear more of this preaching, the families 
camped in the woods for several days. An in- 
teresting American institution came into being, 
the camp-meeting. So well adapted was it to the 
conditions of the frontier that it was to play a 
very great part in bringing religion to the far- 
flung borderland of the advancing nation. Com- 
petent observers reported as many as twenty or 
thirty thousand people at one such gathering. A 
mighty spiritual awakening, remembered in his- 
tory as the Kentucky Revival, began to move 
through the frontier country, spreading out far 
and wide, even beyond the boundaries of Ken- 
tucky and Tennessee. Its effects were felt in a 
quickening of the churches back in the settled com- 
munities of the Hast. | 
Thus men of faith, daring to face what looked 
like a desperate situation, brought out of it, by 
the power of God, great good for the whole nation. 
More and more as the border spread, the spiritual 
need of the frontier called forth men of that kind 


110 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


of faith. There came into being an order of 
ploneer preachers as fearless, as resourceful, as 
aggressive as any of the other frontiersmen. 
Having answered the great challenge, they faced 
every other challenge that was involved in the con- 
fident assurance that they could meet it with the 
help of God. 

The distances were great; tramping endless 
miles or spending their lives on horseback, they 
hunted out the new communities and were often 
‘‘booked up’’ with engagements a year ahead. 
And neither storm nor flood, burning heat nor bit- 
ter cold, seemingly impassable roads nor any 
other obstacle could prevent them from keeping 
those engagements if it was humanly possible for 
them to do so. 

The hardships of the frontier were many and 
great; the messengers of the gospel gladly bore 
more than the rest of the pioneers, braving the 
rigors of constant travel in primitive country, ex- 
posure and illness, loneliness and separation 
from their families, the dangers of lonely trails 
and sometimes hostile Indians, and frequently the 
violent opposition of men who resented their 
coming. : 

The people were very poor; the pioneer min- 
isters endured great privation that the gospel 
might be planted, preaching with ‘‘naked knees,’’ 
as one old pioneer wrote that he had done; re- 
celving perhaps $40 to $100 salary a year, as an- 


THE WINNING OF AMERICA 111 


other able leader did during all the years of his 
missionary life; perhaps going from preaching to 
plowing and from plowing to preaching in order 
to eke out an existence for the loved ones who 
shared the labors and hardships of the gospel 
with them. John Pfrimmer took up the study and 
practise of medicine in order to support his fam- 
ily as well as to help the needy folk of his back- 
woods field. Gideon Blackburn, a great pioneer 
who established churches in Tennessee when he 
had to go from fort to fort in the company of 
soldiers, who inaugurated the eminently success- 
ful mission to the Cherokees, and who ably pro- 
moted education in Tennessee, Kentucky, and 
Illinois, used to farm by day and study by night, 
taking inkhorn, pen, and paper to the field with 
him to make notes on the sermons that he thought 
out as he plowed. 

For the contribution of these men to America’s 
life no one can be sufficiently thankful. They 
gave a right direction to whole communities in 
their formative years. They brought strong aid 
to every good cause. On the most struggling and 
hard-pressed frontiers they insisted on schools 
at the very beginning. Often they took an active 
part in shaping the public life of the new sections, 
as when Dr. Pfrimmer was appointed a county 
judge by General Harrison, the first Governor of 
Indiana Territory, and helped lay the foundations 
of a new region. But primarily they were con- 


112 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


cerned that God should be known and that the 
new communities and the nation should serve 
him. 

At the first these pioneers of faith responded 
to the call of the frontier without much outlook 
for organized help from the people of the settled 
communities. But gradually the churches of the 
original states began to realize the strategic im- 
portance of the tidal movement of population out 
to the great westward areas and to make definite, 
organized efforts to keep up with it. As early as 
1786 the Reformed General Synod appointed a 
committee ‘‘to devise some plan for sending the 
gospel to the destitute localities.’’? Contributions 
were received from the churches and ministers 
sent on short tours in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, 
and Kentucky, and even into Canada. 

The Presbyterian Church organized its national 
representative body, the General Assembly, in 
1789. The Assembly’s very first action was a 
unanimous resolve to send missionaries to the 
frontier and to ask all the churches for an annual 
offering to support them. In 1792 the General 
Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church 
appointed a committee for ‘‘supporting missions 
to preach the gospel on the frontier of the United 
States.”’ 

Perhaps the first regularly Pa cls. mission 
board in America was the Missionary Society of 
Connecticut, formed in 1798 ‘‘to Christianize the 


THE WINNING OF AMERICA 113 


heathen in North America, and to support and 
promote Christian knowledge in the new settle- 
ments within the United States.’’ In thirty years 
this society sent almost two hundred mission- 
aries into Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, 
Ohio, Indiana, Lllinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee, 
and even down the Mississippi River to the Gulf 
of Mexico. Thus church after church earnestly 
undertook a share in meeting the spiritual needs 
of the rapidly growing nation, and worked out 
more and more effective home mission organiza- 
tions and plans during a period of years. 

Now the churches of the Kast, when faced with 
the call of the West, might easily have claimed 
that their hands were full at home. Perhaps the 
lowest ebb in the history of American Chris- 
tianity occurred in the period following the Revo- 
lution. The death of the church within two gener- 
ations was freely predicted, and there appeared 
to be considerable basis for the prophecy. There 
was widespread laxity in religion and morals. As 
late as 1800 only one person out of fourteen in 
the nation was a member of an evangelical church. 
Surely the task of winning the old settled com- 
muuities seemed great enough to use all the 
powers of the church. And if home mission work 
was wanted, there were plenty of frontier areas 
east of the Alleghenies needing the help of the 
churches. Vermont and Maine were just being 
settled. A very large proportion of New York 


114 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


State was practically unsettled and only partly 
explored. 

Yet week by week the churches were called upon 
to pray for their own members starting on the 
long and perilous journey to some far frontier 
where life would be spiritually as well as 
physically hazardous. Men of vision saw com- 
monwealths arising in the wilderness where the 
destiny of the republic might be decided, common- 
wealths in which were growing up youth who 
would be leaders of states and of the nation, and 
out from which would surely go multitudes of men 
and women to people the later and farther fron- 
tiers. For the sake of the pioneers, for the sake 
of America and of the world, Christ must be in 
the very foundations of those commonwealths. 
So the churches organized systematically to try to 
supply the gospel to every new region as soon as 
it was opened. 

Even as they were organizing the frontier had 
escaped them. Just twenty years after the win- 
ning of freedom the already imperial dominions 
of the young republic were again more than 
doubled by a gigantic real estate deal with France 
that pushed the nation’s boundary at the north all 
the way to the towering mountains that were 
dimly known to exist somewhere in the far-dis- 
tant west. Earnest men protested against the 
folly of attempting to extend the nation beyond 
the Mississippi. And, indeed, it did seem im- 


THE WINNING OF AMERICA 115 


possible to hope that regions separated from 
Washington by weeks or even months of difficult 
and dangerous travel could ever be bound 
into an effective national union. Nevertheless, 
Louisiana was made a state in 1812 and Missouri 
in 1821, and the census of 1820 reported two 
hundred thousand people beyond the Mississippi. 
By that time also Indiana, Illinois, Mississippi, 
and Alabama had all grown to the point of state- 
hood, as well as Maine, far to the northeast. 

Confronted by so compelling a situation the 
very ablest men in the churches began to throw 
themselves into the home missionary undertaking. 
They were spurred on by reports of distressing 
conditions in the wide-spreading frontiers. The 
young missionary statesman, Samuel J. Mills, on 
two long missionary tours ‘‘spied out’’ the west- 
ern country. Almost everywhere he found the 
people in a ‘‘desperate state’’ spiritually. In 
whole communities almost no copies of the Bible 
could be found. The state of Louisiana, with 
seventy-six thousand free people and almost half 
that many slaves, contained only one Protestant 
church. The Roman Catholic bishop of New Or- 
leans proclaimed that city ‘‘the most desperately 
wicked place he had ever been in.’’ There was not 
a Protestant church or minister in or near St. 
Louis. 

Governors and other officials befriended the 
young missionary, and statesmen pleaded for min- 


116 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


isters and churches. A little later a layman wrote 
from St. Louis, begging for a preacher on behalf 
of Governor Clark and the supreme court judges. 
Returning east, Mills and his companions went up 
and down with flaming zeal, urging the churches 
to go out and possess this vast domain for Christ. 

In response to such calls as these the churches 
were able to send into the West outstanding men 
whose names and influence continue until today. 
Daniel Smith, who was Mills’? companion on his 
second missionary journey, returned as pastor to 
Natchez whose great need they had seen. Syl- 
vester Larned and Elias Cornelius responded to 
the need of New Orleans, the former to serve as 
the able pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, 
the latter to devote himself to hospitals, jails, sea- 
men, and a congregation of Negroes. 

Samuel Giddings was commissioned to do mis- 
sionary work in Missouri and Illinois. He be- 
eame the first resident Protestant pastor in St. 
Louis, and spent himself in twelve years of sacri- 
ficial labors laying the foundations for the church 
in that city and the surrounding regions. To St. 
Louis, in the year after Giddings’ arrival, went 
John Mason Peck. With his colleague, Welsh, he 
began to teach school and hold religious services 
ina rented house. A society which they formed in 
Missouri and Illinois established fifty schools in 
three years. In long apostolic tours Peck carried 
the gospel through wide destitute reaches. Help- 


THE WINNING OF AMERICA 117 


ing found a college and two theological semi- 
naries, editing magazines, serving as pastor, 
organizing churches, Peck built his life into a 
great region in Missouri, Illinois, and Kentucky. 

It seems scarcely fair to mention any names 
when so many able men were making a way for 
the gospel in the new sections and an increasing 
host of faithful pioneers was laboring devotedly 
to win the whole frontier. Nearly the entire ex- 
panse from the Alleghenies to an uneven line be- 
yond the Mississippi, far more than half of the 
nation’s occupied area, was in a frontier condi- 
tion, calling for missionaries and home mission 
funds. And more frontier was being added every 
year, almost every week. 

The winning of any one section was a long and 
tremendous labor, and as the forerunners of the 
gospel pushed out along every advancing border, 
they left behind years of pioneering to be done. 
A quarter of a century after Ohio became a state 
there were six continuous counties along the Ohio 
River where no minister was employed and where 
in whole communities not one active Christian 
could be found. It was fifteen years after Lllinois 
was admitted to the Union that the first sermon 
was preached at the fort where Chicago now 
stands. The whole population of the settlement— 
Indian, French, and American—totaled not more 
than three hundred. But by that time pioneers 
of the faith were preparing to launch a mission 


118 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


beyond the Rockies. Yet vast areas even within 
the first western borders remained to be occupied. 
Michigan and Wisconsin had scarcely been opened 
to settlement. 

These tremendous labors in the West had only 
been well begun when the attention of the churches 
was inescapably turned to a compelling responsi- 
bility in the opposite direction. Increased activi- 
ties of trade and exploration were making known 
the great lands of the Kast with their crowding 
millions who had never heard of Christ. Ameri- 
ean Christians read with interest the reports of 
the heroic efforts of British and Continental mis- 
sionaries to take the gospel to India, China, 
Persia, and the islands of the Pacific. A group of 
students at Williams College, joined later at An- 
dover Seminary by others, resolved to go them- 
selves to make Christ known somewhere in those 
far lands. The churches could not but send them. 
The American Board of Commissioners for For- 
eign Missions was organized in 1810 and in 1812 
they sent out five of these young men and their 
brides. 

This first board of foreign missions was in- 
tended to be in reality an American Board. Peo- 
ple of numerous denominations joined in its work. 
Presbyterians, and the Dutch and German Re- 
formed Churches continued to work through it 
for many years. But almost immediately the 
Baptist churches were stirred by the word coming 


THE WINNING OF AMERICA 119 


back from the East that some of the first mission- 
aries had become Baptist and they organized to 
support them. One by one the great churches 
formed foreign mission boards and American 
participation in the enterprise of carrying the 
gospel to all the world rapidly grew to large 
proportions. 

It might have been thought that this pouring of 
lives, prayer and funds into an appealing work 
that could have no limits would divert the 
Church’s strength from the labors it already had 
on hand in the West. Instead, a mighty impetus 
was given to the winning of America. It was not 
alone that the young boards of foreign missions, 
formed to meet the needs of the multitudes who 
knew not Christ, launched unprecedented efforts 
to win the American Indians, and that in the en- 
thusiasm to share the gospel with millions who 
had not heard it men felt urgently that no 
farthest settlement in America should be left with- 
out it; but the power of a world-wide purpose was 
put behind the whole work of missions within the 
nation. 

The winning of America became part of a world 
strategy of missions. ‘‘We must have the West,’’ 
proclaimed Christian statesmen, thinking of the 
resources of men and money and Christian power 
that would be required to win the world and real- 
izing with remarkable foresight that it would fall 
to America eventually to carry the largest share 


120 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


of the effort to reach the whole world for Christ. 
So the motto of home missions came to be ‘‘Save 
America to save the world,’’ and ‘‘the enterprise 
of evangelizing America became in effect ...a 
mission to all mankind.’’ 

As the years progressed, it began to dawn on 
men that the young republic was destined to be a 
mighty, homogeneous civilization, continental in 
size, free from many of Kurope’s problems, re- 
ceiving and carrying forward the gains men had 
made in the Old World. What might such a na- 
tion mean for all mankind if it should be con- 
trolled by the spirit of Christ? 

Before such a prospect men began to think of 
the winning of America in imperial terms. It 
looked for a while as if the churches would unite. 
Some young men in the Kast dreamed of a great 
national missionary organization that would plant 
strong men in all the new sections during their 
formative years. Asa result, the American Home 
Missionary Society came into being, which for a 
number of years united the efforts of several im- 
portant denominations. It was apparent that the 
nation-wide need for Bibles could not be success- 
fully met by the many local Bible societies that 
had sprung up, so men of numerous denomina- 
tions founded the American Bible Society, which 
became the great arm of the churches for trans- 
lating, printing, and distributing the Scriptures 
and which has through the years distributed many 


THE WINNING OF AMERICA 121 


millions of Bibles and portions of Scripture. The 
American Sunday School Union, formed when 
there were not more than one hundred Sunday 
schools in the United States, was instrumental 
in opening more than a hundred thousand in 
eighty years. The American Tract Society has 
issued more than a billion copies of numerous 
publications that have taken the knowledge of 
Christ to many who might not otherwise have 
heard. 

It is not surprising that, with the vision of 
youth, students in the colleges and seminaries 
caught the true significance of the spiritual chal- 
lenge of those years and by their faith and devo- 
tion helped make possible numerous missionary 
undertakings. Their ‘‘Societies of Inquiry’’ in 
numerous institutions kept in close touch with 
the world-wide Christian movement with a view 
to having an active part init. Eleven men of the 
Society at Yale, moved to invest their lives in one 
of the rising communities of the West, went in a 
body to Illinois. Building churches, founding 
colleges and schools, and encouraging all the 
forces of good in the new settlements, the ‘‘ Illinois 
Band’’ made a priceless contribution to the form- 
ing life of that great state. A group of Andover 
Seminary students made a like contribution to the 
life of Iowa in the infancy of that commonwealth. 
These were only two of a number of ‘‘bands’’ 
that wielded great influence in the growing West. 


122 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


Suddenly, with one leap, the frontier of Amer- 
ica moved farther than it had im all the years 
since the founding of Jamestown. It was really 
the Church, with all her other responsibilities, 
that made the leap. She could not do otherwise. 
For in 1832 there walked into the little town of 
St. Louis four strange Indians who had made 
their way on foot through countless perils to 
seek the ‘‘White Man’s Book of Heaven,’’ of 
which their people had heard in their homes in 
the far Northwest. In a little while Jason Lee 
and his associates, for the Methodists, were seek- 
ing the Indians in the Willamette Valley of the 
Oregon country, greatly extending their work 
when a large company of reénforcements—min- 
isters, a doctor, teachers, farmers, and mechanics, 
with their families—arrived a few years later. 

Meanwhile, Marcus Whitman, a young doctor, 
and H. H. Spalding, a young minister, with their 
brides and other associates started a varied work 
of teaching, preaching, farming, translating, 
printing, and other labors among the Indians who 
had sent the messengers to St. Louis, and their 
neighbors, in what is now eastern Oregon and 
Idaho. 

With the vision often displayed by pioneers of 
the faith, Lee and Whitman and their associates 
foresaw that settlers would follow them, in spite 
of interminable miles fraught with peril. While 
statesmen in Washington could scarcely see any 


THE WINNING OF AMERICA 123 


value in the Oregon country, the missionaries 
labored to save that rich territory, which Great 
Britain wanted, for the United States. They 
strove earnestly to secure the right kind of set- 
tlers. They met them, on their entrance, with 
strong Christian influences. They had established 
beforehand many of the institutions of a Christian 
civilization. The people of Lee’s mission played 
a great part in the organization of a provisional 
government. George Abernethy, the steward of 
the mission, was chosen provisional governor 
and guided the affairs of Oregon during diffi- 
cult years till he turned over his authority to 
the territorial governor appointed by President 
Polk. These far-sighted missionaries established 
an academy in Portland when that city had less 
than a hundred inhabitants. And only fifteen 
years after Lee’s coming to seek the Indians a 
Methodist conference was formed to direct the 
work among the white population, and the labors 
of the Willamette Valley missionaries were al- 
most entirely turned in that direction because of 
the dying out of the Indians in the Willamette re- 
gion. 

In the South an even more amazing develop- 
ment was going on. In January, 1848, gold was 
discovered in California. The next month the 
vast Mexican area south of the Oregon line and 
reaching across the country to Texas came into 
the possession of the United States. Texas had 


124. THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


been annexed three years before. Within two 
years there was more than one hundred thousand 
population. Before three years had passed Cali- 
fornia was admitted to statehood. 

In the year that gold was discovered Sylvester 
Woodbridge started for the Golden Gate as a mis- 
sionary. The next April he organized the first 
Protestant church in California. Before mid- 
summer Congregationalists, Methodists, Presby- 
terians, Baptists, and Episcopalians had founded 
ehurches in San Francisco alone. Here, with 
fabulous earthly wealth on every hand, men of 
God sought rather the spiritual welfare of men 
and women who were making a great new country. 

The leap across the continent made it inevitable 
that the American republic must become one of 
the chief world powers. She was now a Pacific 
as well as an Atlantic nation and in the great 
moves that would be made in that mighty arena of 
world interests she must take her part. In no 
other relations would the nation’s principles be 
more severely put to the test nor her Christian 
influences be more needed. The splendid mis- 
sionary strategy of winning the United States for 
the sake of the world was more than ever em- 
phasized. 

The first book printed west of the Rocky Moun- 
tains was done on a press sent to Mr. Spalding by 
American missionaries far to the west of his 
station. Some boys from the Hawaiian Islands, 


THE WINNING OF AMERICA 125 


where Captain Cook had been devoured by canni- 
bals while the American Revolution was going on, 
had so impressed certain students at Yale and 
Andover that a large company of missionaries set 
out for the Islands on one of the first missions of 
the American Board at the very time that the na- 
tives were destroying their idols and wiping out 
their old religion. Christianity was soon widely 
received, a strong Hawaiian Church was built up 
and to it the work in the Islands was committed 
long before the United States came into posses- 
sion of Hawaii in 1898. The great influx of 
people from the crowded lands of the Far Hast 
makes, however, a tremendous missionary prob- 
lem today. The Hpiscopal Church maintains a 
mission in the Islands. 

The western border of the nation had at last 
come to rest on the shores of the Pacific. But the 
churches that had undertaken to keep up with the 
frontier faced still the biggest task of all. Be- 
tween the Pacific slope and the already settled 
regions to the east lay perhaps half the whole 
area of the nation. Into it, especially after the 
Civil War, settlers poured at alarming speed, the 
usual forces of evil going along, the saloon, the 
gambling den, the cheap dance hall, and worse. 
In one small section of this vast area a pioneer 
missionary could see men and women ‘‘laying the 
foundations of a commonwealth larger than Eng- 
land, Scotland, and Wales, and leaving out God.’’ 


— 126 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


In a single year settlers took over public lands 
equivalent in extent to two states of Massachu- 
setts. From March to October of one year three 
thousand persons a day entered Dakota Territory 
alone. There came a time when along the whole 
line from Canada to the southern border the 
occupying army of settlers moved westward at 
the rate of sixteen miles a year. 

It would take empire builders to be equal to 
such a situation. And they arose. Going into 
Kansas, when it was beyond the frontier, to min- 
ister to the Delaware Indians, L. B. Stateler and 
his brave wife remained to lay foundations for 
the church over a wide area as the settlers moved 
into that territory. After a quarter of a century 
they moved farther west, went with a long wagon 
train of miners into Montana when gold was dis- 
covered, provided a place of worship before they 
had a shelter for themselves and then for almost 
thirty years labored to establish the church in that 
great region. 

After fruitful missionary pioneering in Minne- 
sota, Sheldon Jackson accepted a commission as 
‘¢Superintendent of missions for western Iowa, 
Nebraska, Dakota, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, 
and Utah.’’ Seizing the strategic points in tire- 
less journeyings,—he traveled twenty-nine thou- 
sand miles the first year,—challenging the best 
young men in the seminaries to work in the West, 
personally securing thousands of dollars from the 


THE WINNING OF AMERICA 127 


churches of the Hast, Jackson did actually plant 
the Presbyterian Church in a greater part of his 
colossal field, adding Arizona and New Mexico 
later to his parish, with some work in Texas, and 
finally extending his labors to Alaska and arous- 
ing his church to great efforts in that land. 

So throughout the long decades of the develop- 
ment of this last great West, while the frontier 
shifted with elusive speed and there was always 
some section filling in with such startling rapidity 
as to challenge all the resources of the churches, 
there were never wanting men who coveted whole 
states for Christ and directed the Christian occu- 
pation of princely regions. The alertness of the 
churches to keep up with their task, after genera- 
tions of pioneering, was shown when the Chero- 
kee Strip of Oklahoma was opened to settlement 
at a certain hour on a certain Saturday in 1893. 
There was a wild stampede for the choicest places. 
The towns of Enid, Paul Creek, Perry, Wood- 
ward, and Pawnee were staked out that Saturday 
afternoon. The next day Christian worship was 
held in each of these places and on Monday the 
work of organizing churches was begun. For 
missionaries had been in the milling crowd that 
fretted along the border till the hour of opening 
should arrive. 

In the midst of these labors another great area 
called for the help of the churches. Moved by 
what she heard on a visit to Portland, Oregon, 


128 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


Mrs. A. R. McFarland went to Alaska, whose 
acquisition ten years before had increased the 
total size of the United States about one fifth. 
Leaving her to start work in the old fort at Fort 
Wrangell, Sheldon Jackson, who had accompanied 
Mrs. McFarland, returned to awaken the churches 
to the frightful conditions of immorality, debauch- 
ery, witchcraft, slavery, warfare, and murder that 
engulfed the people. On several trips and an 
extended stay in Alaska he shared with such great 
pioneers as S. Hall Young in planting the church 
over a great area, establishing education, and 
helping the people out of wretchedness into good 
conditions. 

Besides combating unusual difficulties and dan- 
gers to reach the natives, missionaries in Alaska 
had to face the terrific problem of an incoming 
tide of fortune seekers. Through as heroic labors 
as any mission field has seen, remarkable results 
have been achieved and the church is well estab- 
lished. Among other pioneers Bishop Rowe and 
Archdeacon Stuck are known for long and fear- 
less journeys over lonely frozen reaches to plant 
their church through a great expanse of the in- 
terior. The most northern mission station in the 
world has long been operating at Point Barrow. 

Comparatively recent years opened up new 
frontiers for home mission work in the West 
Indies. During the centuries of Spanish control 
the islands had been sealed against evangelical 


THE WINNING OF AMERICA 129 


influence. Today flourishing work is being carried 
on by several churches. In Porto Rico under the 
American flag is an unusual opportunity for 
reaching out to the whole Spanish-speaking world. 
Seven denominations form the Evangelical Union 
of Porto Rico. Their theological seminary at- 
tracts students from other islands and from 
Colombia and Venezuela. The Polytechnic Insti- 
tute is a great school that is already having a 
marked influence throughout the island. The 
church in Cuba is very largely manned by the 
Cubans. A short time ago, the Evangelical 
Church of Spain sent a representative to Cuba to 
ask for help, which was given. The Dominican 
Republic is particularly notable in that the work 
there was instituted by the Porto Rican churches, 
and is a union enterprise carried on by the Board 
for Christian Work in Santo Domingo, supported 
jointly by Presbyterians, Methodists, and United 
Brethren. 

Thus through the generations frontier after 
frontier was occupied by the churches. Yet even 
today there remain frontier regions to be entered. 
As many homesteads were taken up by settlers in 
the last ten years as in any decade during the last 
half century. There are still wide regions with 
scattered population that have scarcely been en- 
tered by the churches. The Sunday-school mis- 
sionaries of one denomination alone in a recent 
year worked in more than seventeen hundred 


130 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


rural communities in which there was no religious 
organization of any kind to provide Christian 
nurture for the children and youth. 

It is not surprising that frontiers remain; the 
surprising thing is that the churches have so 
nearly kept up with the breathless pace of the 
country’s expansion. This is all the more true 
when one remembers that the forces engaged in 
extending Christianity in America have never 
been united in a concerted effort planned to meet 
the whole situation. Always there have been 
many plans, made and carried out by many 
agencies or individual workers. 

As a result the churches have not always been 
true to the pioneers who at any cost claimed all 
the new regions for Christ. Multiplying of com- 
peting churches in already occupied communities 
has seriously interfered both with completing in 
those communities the work the pioneers began 
and with reaching out into frontier regions des- 
titute of the gospel. 

Yet always there have been home missionary 
statesmen who have seen the whole undertaking 
in all its magnitude and have wanted to plan ac- 
cordingly. There are today earnest efforts to 
overcome competition and duplication of labor 
through such organizations as the Home Missions 
Council and the Council of Women for Home 
Missions, with which bodies sixty-three home mis- 
sion agencies affiliate, and through many state 


THE WINNING OF AMERICA 131 


and local councils and federations that are coordi- 
nating the Christian work in their own regions. 
Missionaries engaged in certain fields meet to 
consider together the best ways of facing their 
whole responsibility; there are, for example, reg- 
ular interdenominational conferences of the work- 
ers among the Spanish-speaking people of the 
Southwest. Joint surveys of fields and studies of 
particular problems and other cooperative efforts 
look toward a more effective carrying out of the 
home mission task. 

From the beginning the work of winning 
America has been such as to call for the best pos- 
sible use of all the forces and funds that all the 
churches could put into it. Never was this more 
true than now. It took daring churches to re- 
spond in the nation’s infancy to the first calls of 
the frontier when there was so much to do at 
home. Could they have seen what lay ahead, even 
more courageous faith might have been required 
of them. For the immense labor of supplying the 
gospel to all the West, no matter how fast it 
should grow, was to be far from the whole work 
of winning America. While the nation grew as if 
by magic so that only a heroic faith could con- 
template keeping up with it, the difficulties and 
complexities of the entire Christian enterprise in 
the United States multiplied. 

Even before 1800 missionary leaders began to 
see that they were facing a complex task and to 


132 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


plan to meet varied needs. The missionary com- 
mittee of a leading denomination reported that it 
was attempting to send missionaries: 


1. To those who are settled on our frontiers. . . 
2. To certain places in the more settled parts where the gospel 
has not been regularly established. 


3. To the black people or Negroes of the United States... . 

4. To the Indians or Aborigines of our country. 

The missionary challenge of the Indians called 
to the people of Europe before the founding of the 
first British settlement in America; it was present 
everywhere in the colonies; it was ever on the 
border of the advancing nation. Courageous and 
self-sacrificing service to the original Americans 
played a great part in the opening up of almost 
every new area of the country. Many of the 
famous tribes such as the Sioux, or Dakotas, the 
Nez Perces, the Pimas, and others, have been won 
almost unanimously to Christianity through the 
long and sacrificial labors of remarkable men and 
women, but there are great tribes, like the Nava- 
jos, very little influenced by Christianity, while 
on some fields the missionary still labors among 
practically pagan Indians. | 

Almost as early as the challenge of the Indians 
eame the challenge of the Negro, for even before 
the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth African slaves 
were introduced at Jamestown. By the time of 
the first national census there were more than 
three fourths of a million Negroes, not all slaves, 
out of a population of slightly less than four mil- 


THE WINNING OF AMERICA 133 


lions. Very early, religious leaders began to seek 
the Negroes. Schools and other missionary en- 
deavors were established for them during colonial 
days, and early in the national era they began to 
be received into the churches in large numbers. 
Many white masters instructed their slaves in re- 
ligion, while white pastors added the care of 
Negro congregations to their other ministries. 
Under the leadership of Bishop Capers and others 
efforts were made at large expenditure to reach 
the great companies of slaves who worked and 
lived together on the large plantations where 
there was little to win them from the superstition, 
fetishism and even witchcraft of Africa. 

With the end of the Civil War numerous mis- 
sionary agencies immediately launched great en- 
deavors to serve the millions of black folk so sud- 
denly thrown on their own responsibility. Many 
churches were built, literally hundreds of day 
schools were opened and scores of boarding 
schools and there soon arose such great institu- 
tions as Hampton, Fisk, and Atlanta, to train 
leaders for the race. 

Today about one in every ten persons in the 
United States is a Negro. There is no more un- 
compromising challenge to our Christianity than 
the matter of the welfare of these ten and a half 
million Americans. 

Another missionary challenge almost as old as 
either of the foregoing is that which comes from 


134 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


immigration. The colonies were founded by im- 
migrants, and tens of thousands more immi- 
grants kept pouring into the New World all during 
the colonial period and had their part in the mak- 
ing of the American nation. The incoming tide 
continued, and toward the middie of the nine- 
teenth century rose to enormous proportions. 
Many of these newcomers went direct to the west- 
ern frontiers to help build the new America, and 
foreign language churches like the Lutheran and 
the United Brethren worked among them there. 

The problem of ministering to the incoming 
millions became greater and greater as the tide of 
immigration began to flow from countries whose 
religious and social customs differ widely from 
those of most Americans and as great numbers of 
the foreign-born were crowded together in large 
cities or industrial communities, practically mak- 
ing foreign settlements in America. Compara- 
tively recent immigration brought to our shores 
3,000,000 Poles, 1,500,000 Jugo-Slavs, 400,000 
Czechs, 400,000 Russians, 350,000 Ukrainians, 
400,000 Hungarians, and 3,000,000 Italians. 

There are now in this land fourteen million 
people of foreign birth and twenty-one million 
others of foreign parentage. ‘T'o be true friends 
to the newcomers, learning from them what they 
have to give and sharing with them the best we 
know, for the building together of a Christian 
America, has been and is one of the greatest tasks 
and opportunities facing the churches. 


THE WINNING OF AMERICA 135 


Among those who found a home in the old 
Dutch city of New Amsterdam was a company of 
Jewish refugees. The number of Jews in Amer- 
ica has grown until the nation now contains the 
largest and most influential section of the Jewish 
race. During the years these people have very 
largely drifted from their old religion, less than 
twenty per cent are said to be connected in any 
vital way with the synagogue. Through neigh- 
borly Christian service as well as through 
sympathetic presentation of Christian truth, 
numerous home mission agencies are seeking to 
interpret the way of Christ to these people. 

The early appearance of another great mis- 
sionary challenge is indicated by a report regard- 
ing certain sections of New York City that it is 
hard to believe dates from 1816: 

‘‘There were houses crowded with from four to 
twelve families each, often two or three families 
in a room, and ‘those of all colors,’ with all the 
evidences of the immorality which overcrowding 
tends to produce. Whole neighborhoods were 
found reduced by intemperance to ‘beggary, 
wretchedness, and death... .’ Dance halls and 
dives, with ‘The Way to Hell’ inscribed in glar- 
ing capitals, were displayed, twenty in the space 
of thirty or forty rods.”’ 

In the midst of his world-wide missionary plan- 
ning, Samuel J. Mills had turned his attention for 
a while to city mission work in New York, and 
these are some of the conditions that he found. 





136 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


Already there was one special missionary society 
at work in the city, and Mills helped organize a 
work for seamen. Since that time the remark- 
able growth of cities with an intensification of 
all the problems involved, has called for the best 
thought and most devoted efforts of the churches. 
At present more than half of the nation’s popu- 
lation is found in urban communities. One fourth 
of the people of the United States live in sixty- 
eight cities. If America is to be won for Christ, 
the cities with their teeming life must be won. 

Such problems as these grew ever larger with 
the growth of the nation, and as the population 
moved westward the advancing frontier brought 
new missionary problems. When the first great 
migration flowed over the southern passes, con- 
siderable numbers of Scotch and Scotch-Irish, 
along with English, French Huguenots and some 
Germans, found their way into the fastnesses of 
the southern mountains. There they remained 
while the currents of a developing nation passed 
them by. Jn those mountains today several de- 
nominations are seeking to share all the best 
things of America’s life with these long isolated 
descendants of some of the sturdiest of the 
pioneers, now several million in number. 

In the wide reaches of the West developed the 
problem of ministering to great rural areas. This 
situation has been complicated in recent years by 
the moving of great numbers from the country 


THE WINNING OF AMERICA 137 


into the growing cities, the incoming of a large 
percentage of tenant farmers, and the running 
down of many rural districts. Thousands of once 
strong country churches have been crippled, and 
the country, so long the center of power in 
American Christianity, has become in many in- 
stances a field as urgently calling for help as the 
city. Ten thousand rural communities in Amer- 
ica have no religious facilities. In many thou- 
sands of other places the work is wholly inade- 
quate to the present need. 

Several denominations are making a hopeful 
contribution to the solution of this problem by 
establishing ‘‘demonstration parishes,’’ large 
areas in which strong men are put to work as 
pastors, generally with no competing churches, 
and backed by all the experience and resources of 
their mission boards, in an attempt to serve the 
communities in every possible way and develop 
strong churches which will be the center of a 
satisfying life for whole countrysides. 

Sheldon Jackson and other pioneers, coming in 
contact with the Mormons, who had migrated to 
Utah some years before to get outside the 
boundaries of the United States, made efforts to 
reach them, as well as to minister to the non- 
Mormons who had settled in their midst. The 
Mormon system still dominates the lives of a 
great majority of the people not only in Utah 
but in several other mountain regions. Here 


138 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


within our own nation is a religion that teaches 
that there are many gods with bodies of flesh and 
blood as tangible as man’s. This very difficult 
area is for the most part carefully apportioned 
among the different denominations and efforts 
are being made to spread the knowledge of Christ. 

Beginning far back in the earliest years of the 
last great frontier when ‘‘Father’’ Dyer preached 
to the lumberjacks in a Minnesota logging camp 
and, like many another pioneer of the cross, 
sought to make known the gospel to the miners 
before their little shacks or in saloons in Colo- 
rado, the hearts of the servants of the Good Shep- 
herd have been drawn to those whose work takes 
them wandering hither and thither and separates 
them from many of the best things in life. Be- 
sides thousands of miners and lumberjacks the 
developing country called for more and more 
migrant workers, on immense railroad systems, 
on oil developments, in beet fields and grain 
fields, in the great orchards and the canneries, 
until there came to be myriads of laborers, men, 
women and children, who move continually from 
place to place for a chance to work, generally at 
the hardest toil, in industries on which our com- 
fort and welfare depend. Naturally it is very 
difficult to minister to this shifting multitude but 
increasingly efficient efforts are being made by 
several denominations, including hopeful inter- 
denominational work in the canneries. 

The addition of the great Southwest to the 


THE WINNING OF AMERICA 139 


territory of the United States in 1845 and 1848 
brought into the nation at one stroke thousands 
of people of an alien tongue and tradition. The 
oldest families of Kuropean origin in the United 
States are the descendants, not of the founders 
of Jamestown or Plymouth but of the men and 
women who followed the old Spanish explorers 
into the Southwest. Some of the churches recog- 
nized this new home mission challenge at once. 
As early as 1849 W. H. Reed, a Baptist, was at 
work in Santa Fe. ‘Today mission schools for 
Spanish-speaking boys and girls are making a 
great contribution to the lives of Southwestern 
states, while community houses, Sunday schools, 
vacation Bible schools and churches minister to 
many. 

But all these efforts have never kept apace 
with the increase in the Spanish-speaking popu- 
lation, for great numbers have come across the 
border from the south, especially in recent years 
when there has been such a demand for Mexican 
labor and no quota has held down Mexican immi- 
gration. Scattered over many states and doing 
the hardest kind of labor, these toilers, tradi- 
tionally Roman Catholic but often without any 
active religious life, deserve the best the Prot- 
estant churches can offer. 

The sudden leap of the border to the Pacific 
brought one home mission challenge with which 
great world-wide issues were and are bound up. 
On the coast were some Orientals, more came dur- 


140 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


ing the rapid development of that region. Their 
number has never been large. Somewhat more 
than sixty thousand Chinese, about 111,000 Japa- 
nese, and a few thousand Koreans dwell in our 
country today. But they raise the whole ques- 
tion of Christian inter-racial relations. To the 
Orient Christianity is on trial and there are few 
more obvious or exacting tests than our treat- 
ment of the Orientals in this country. Repre- 
sentatives of home mission agencies are seeking 
in varied ministries to meet that test. 

The old pioneers who dared set out to claim 
the border for Christ have been more than justi- 
fied by the years. The Church has been planted 
in every part of America, and in some measure, 
at least, the best hopes and ideals of those who 
brought the Cross to America have been carried 
forward and built into the life and institutions 
of the land. Scores of thousands of churches 
have been built to minister in scores of thousands 
of communities. 

Not only have the churches kept pace with the 
great and increasing geographical expansion, but 
an ever-increasing proportion of the people of the 
land has been gathered into them. Between the 
years 1800 and 1890 the population of the nation 
increased almost twelvefold. But the member- 
ship of the evangelical churches increased thirty- 
eight fold. While in 1800 there was one evan- 
gelical communicant in 14.5 of the population by 


THE WINNING OF AMERICA 141 


the middle of the century there was one in 6.57 
and by the end of the century one in 4.25. 

The vision, too, of a great base for a world- 
wide Christian effort has come to pass. Out from 
America has gone such a movement for carrying 
the gospel to the ends of the earth as the world 
has never seen before. 

Yet it is obvious that the vision of those old 
pioneers has not yet been fulfilled; the America 
of their hopes is still on ahead. The work of 
winning the nation for Christ is perhaps larger 
today than ever before. Still the pioneers are 
again justified, for recent years have made clearer 
than ever what it might mean for the whole world 
if Christ should really be supreme in the life of 
America. Geographically His gospel has been 
carried throughout the land. But pioneers of as 
great faith as any in the past are needed to carry 
it into every part of the nation’s life, into every 
relation, into the solution of every problem, if 
the hopes and labors of the men and women who 
dared claim America for Christ are to come to 
full fruition. 


CHAPTER V 
Tue CuurcH SEEKS THE WHOLE WoRrRLD 


UST three hundred years after Columbus 
opened a whole world to the adventurous 
spirit of Europe there met in a humble 

parlor in Kettering, England, twelve practically 
unknown men who were to propose an even more 
daring enterprise. Stirred by the insistent ap- 
peals of one of their number, William Carey, a 
former cobbler, they had taken the burden of the 
non-Christian world to their hearts; they were 
met to form a ‘‘Baptist Society for propagating 
the Gospel among the Heathen.’’ What a wildly 
fantastic thing to do! 

There was not in all the Anglo-Saxon world a 
foreign missionary society. Four years later 
when a proposal to send the gospel to non-Chris- 
tian lands came up in the Assembly of the Scotch 
Church it was met by a resolution that ‘‘to spread 
abroad the knowledge of the gospel among bar- 
barous and heathen nations seems to be highly 
preposterous, in so far as philosophy and learn- 
ing must in the nature of things take the pre- 
cedence, and that while there remains at home a 
single individual every year without the means of 
religious knowledge, to propagate it abroad would 
be improper and absurd.’’ The most powerful 


commercial organization in the British Empire, 
142 


CHURCH SEEKS THE WHOLE WORLD 143 


the East India Company, was actively opposed 
to the entrance of missionaries into its princely 
domains. It was reported after the little meeting 
at Kettering that ‘‘good Dr. Stennett advised the 
London ministers to stand aloof, and not commit 
themselves.’’ The twelve preachers from rural 
or small-town churches who met together that 
November day were without money and without 
apparent influence. ‘‘There was no precedent 
for them to follow; no missionary association 
whose methods they might imitate; no favorable 
opening was known to them in any heathen coun- 
try; no other body of Protestant Christians in 
England contemplated or even favored such 
action.’’* 

One cannot refrain from comparing these 
twelve humble men with the disciples who met in 
the upper room after their Lord had gone away 
and, poor and unknown and unlettered as they 
were, dared to undertake the carrying of his good 
news to the hostile world that had slain their 
Master. To the mind of the average man of 
‘““common sense’’ both groups were just stark 
mad. 

Yet at the meeting in Mrs. Wallis’ parlor these 
twelve men, with the quiet dignity of those who 
are following the Spirit of God, drew up twelve 
resolutions binding themselves ‘‘to act in society 


1 Mason, Wonders of Missions, p. 26. 


144 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


together’’ in ‘‘making an effort for the propaga- 
tion of the Gospel among the heathen,’’ and open- 
ing a subscription for the purpose. T'he men who 
signed the resolution subscribed thirteen pounds, 
two shillings and sixpence, or about sixty-three 
dollars. In three months they appointed two mis- 
sionaries, and in five more months the mission- 
aries and their families set sail on a Danish ves- 
sel, the Hast India Company having denied them 
passage on any of its ships. 

In less than one hundred and fifty years from 
the time this little company of pioneers set forth 
on what was generally regarded as a foolhardy 
undertaking doomed to certain failure, the good 
news of Christ has been carried into almost every 
land on earth. Imagine the astonishment of the 
men in Kettering if they had been told on the 
day of their apparently insignificant meeting that 
within a few generations the missionary enter- 
prise would be practically world-wide in its 
scope. 

In 1792, when the twelve men of vision launched 
forth on their great adventure, Christianity was 
practically confined to Europe and the Americas. 
A few European colonists had settled in little sec- 
tions of Africa and Asia and in Australia and 
various islands. Other Christians were to be 
found in spots, as in western India, the Near Kast, 
Abyssinia, and Egypt. These latter were mem- 
bers of ancient churches—for the most part 


CHURCH SEEKS THE WHOLE WORLD 145 


churches that had become formal and rather in- 
effective. For practical purposes it may be said 
that the two greatest continents on earth, con- 
taining more than half the habitable area and far 
more than half the population of the world—the 
figure is probably nearer two thirds—did not 
know of Christ. 

Tt is a little hard to understand today how the 
Christian people of Kurope and, later, those of 
the Americas had gone on so very many years in 
the enjoyment of the blessings of Christ and had 
not made every effort to share these with the rest 
of the world. It may be claimed in explanation 
that Asia and Africa were almost unknown lands 
to the peoples of Europe and America and did not 
touch their lives closely enough to be noticed. 
Had that sort of reasoning been followed a few 
centuries before, who would have carried the 
gospel to the lands of Europe? It seems strange 
that the people of those lands did not show their 
appreciation by sharing the good news from the 
beginning with the teeming millions of Asia and 
Africa. Be it said with sorrow that they were 
willing to accept the forced labor of African 
slaves or the profits of the slave trade, perhaps 
the most revoltingly brutal and murderous busi- 
ness in which Europeans or Americans ever en- 
gaged, before they were aroused to send the 
Christian message to Africa. And they were 
ready to use the valued products of Asia and reap 


146 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


the rich profits of the Asiatic trade before they 
thought seriously of sharing Christ with Asia’s 
toilers who made possible those gifts. Would 
that the dwellers of the East and the South had 
seen first the Christian love of Western lands 
rather than their insatiable thirst for riches and 
power! 

One cannot but wonder how different might 
have been this world that we have inherited, with 
its mutual suspicions between Hast and West, be- 
tween white and tinted races, if some of the re- 
markable opportunities for missionary work 
during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth 
centuries had been eagerly seized upon by Prot- 
estant missionaries. One cannot help wondering 
also how different might be the state of Protes- 
tantism today and how much more glorious might 
have been its history had it thrown its eager new 
life into the carrying out of the great commission. 
Could it have possibly fallen into such disgraceful 
schism and wasted so much precious energy and 
time in shameful quarreling if it had heeded 
Christ’s imperious ‘‘Go’’ as its first business? 

Strangely enough, the Reformation was not 
missionary. Neither Luther nor Calvin saw any 
place for foreign missions. Leaders of the re- 
formed churches used learned theological argu- 
ments against such enterprises. For the most 
part there was a feeling that the end of the world 
was very near. There was also a literal interpre- 


CHURCH SEEKS THE WHOLE WORLD 147 


tation of some sayings of the New Testament that 
made men say the gospel had already been 
preached in all the world and there was no obliga- 
tion to take it again to those who had reverted 
from it. Great theologians maintained that the 
obligation to preach the gospel in all the world 
was the personal privilege of the apostles and 
did not extend beyond them. The theological 
faculty at Wittenberg, the birthplace of the Ger- 
man Reformation, drew up an official document 
listing such arguments as these, as an answer to 
those who were rash enough to suggest taking 
the gospel to other lands. 

Indirectly, however, the Reformation had pro- 
found missionary results. The great Counter 
Reformation in the Roman Catholic Church was 
zealously missionary in its spirit. No doubt the 
Roman Church was glad for the opportunity of 
making up in other lands the losses it was sus- 
taining in Europe. That motive cannot account, 
however, for the apostolic eagerness with which 
for generations its missionaries sought out the 
farthest places on earth to which to carry the 
message of the Cross. Foremost among these 
messengers of the Church were the Jesuits, mem- 
bers of the newly formed order, the Society of 
Jesus. 

Founded by a little group of students in a great 
university, the Society of Jesus soon became a 
mighty power around the world. Its organizer 


148 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


and inspiring genius was Ignatius Loyola, a val- 
iant soldier who had been wounded and who, dur- 
ing the long period of recuperation, had time to 
think on spiritual things. Its greatest missionary 
was Francis Xavier, who coveted the whole 
Orient for his Master. The Jesuit order was 
sanctioned in 1540. Two years later Xavier was 
in India. By unique methods he would attract 
crowds and then tell them of Christ. He loved to 
talk to children. In ten years of labor he taught 
multitudes and baptized scores of thousands. 

When the large numbers of converts of the 
early Roman Catholic missionaries are men- 
tioned, perhaps it should be remembered that 
those missionaries put a great deal of faith in out- 
ward forms and too little insistence on actual 
understanding and on education. Modern mis- 
sionaries have done well to strive for an educated 
and well-grounded Church. 

There is no denying that much of the work of 
the Jesuits was superficial. They even practised 
various deceptions to appear to conform to na- 
tive religious customs while at the same time 
claiming to worship Christ. Indeed this sort of 
thing went so far not only in India but also in 
China as to bring disgrace and punishment on the 
order later on. At any rate, large numbers were 
enrolled in churches. When Carey’s work began 
in India there were a million Indian members of 
the Roman Catholic Church. 


CHURCH SEEKS THE WHOLE WORLD 149 


The burning zeal of Xavier carried him through 
the Malay Peninsula and then with great eager- 
ness to Japan, of whose culture and intelligence 
he had heard. Led by a converted murderer 
whom he had found on the way, he entered the 
island empire and for two years and a half went 
up and down the land preaching Christ. The re- 
sults were remarkable. Before long a church of 
600,000 members was reported. 

The Christians of Japan were to face, all too 
soon, the most relentless persecution. And the 
Western world was at least largely to blame. A 
Kuropean sailor frightened the Japanese officials 
by the proud boast that the missionaries were but 
the forerunners of his sovereign who would later 
send fleets and armies to subdue the places where 
priests and monks had prepared the way. 

A Japanese embassy to Europe to search out 
the truth concerning this new religion arrived 
during the terrible days of the Inquisition and 
went back to warn Japan against having any- 
thing to do with Christianity. The edicts against 
the faith became more and more stringent. With 
utmost heroism men, women, and children re- 
mained true to Christ. Finally there was such a 
wholesale slaughter of Christians as has scarcely 
ever befallen the followers of any faith anywhere. 
Literally tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of 
thousands, were slain. An imperial decree was 
issued, threatening any Christian with death if 


150 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


he set foot in Japan. This decree was not re- 
moved from the notice boards along the Japanese 
roads until about fifty years ago. It will repay 
anyone to read the stories of the heroism of the 
Japanese martyrs as they are told, for instance, 
in Japaw on the Upward Trail by William 
Axling.? 

From Japan Xavier, still driven on by the in- 
tense missionary passion that burned within him, 
sought to enter China. Refused admittance and 
overtaken by illness, he died on the island of San 
Chan, with an agonizing cry on his lips toward 
the rock of China that seemed so impregnable. 

But the stone wall of Chinese opposition did 
break and Jesuits entered that land. Very large 
numerical results were obtained and Christianity 
rose to a position of great favor. It has even 
been said that in the early part of the seventeenth 
century Christianity, or rather a mixture of 
Christianity and Confucianism, bade fair to be- 
come the religion of China. A priest wrote in 
1700 that the Emperor of China had given some 
Jesuits a house in the palace enclosure and had 
aided financially in the building of a Christian 
church in Peking. 

Before this time, attracted by the success of the 
Jesuits, the Dominican order had entered China 
in considerable force. Its members objected to 
some of the Jesuit practises and there ensued 

2 Published by the Missionary Education Movement. 


CHURCH SEEKS THE WHOLE WORLD 151 


long and disgraceful quarreling that crippled the 
cause of the Church in China. Less friendly em- 
perors came to power and persecution arose. In 
one year, 1722, three hundred churches were de- 
stroyed and three hundred thousand Christians 
left without the ministrations of the Church. Yet 
Roman Catholic Christians were found in China 
in the nineteenth century when new work began. 

Protestants may well lament the fact that they 
were having no part in the missionary work of 
these centuries. But the leaven that was to cause 
the great change was at work. As early as 1535 
Wrasmus, who, though he did not leave the old 
Church, was one of the greatest leaders in the 
awakening mental and spiritual life of Europe, 
put forth a most eloquent statement of the duty 
of carrying the gospel to the whole world. With 
statesmanlike vision his argument surveys the 
world, mentioning land after land where many 
might be won for Christ. Boldly it points out 
that there are lands under the sway of Christian 
princes ‘‘so hard pressed .. . by the heavy yoke 
of man, that they cannot take upon them the easy 
yoke of Christ.’’ One by one he takes up the 
hindrances to this world endeavor for the Master 
and answers them. 


The first Protestant people to come officially in 
contact with the Far East were the Dutch. They 
gradually drove the Portuguese out of the Malay 


152 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


Archipelago, South India, and Ceylon. In 1602 
the charter of the Dutch East India Company re- 
quired that organization ‘‘to care for the planting 
of the Church and the conversion of the heathen.’’ 
Missionaries were sent and churches established. 
Unfortunately, the close official relations with the 
Company did not always make for the best re- 
sults. The great scholar and international 
lawyer, Grotius, was much interested in this work. 


The next great developments were led by Ger- 
mans. ‘The noble Baron von Welz deserves a 
place of honor among the world’s missionary 
heroes. In 1664 he published two pamphlets that 
asked the Church in general some very embar- 
rassing questions: Is it right to keep the gospel to 
ourselves? Is it right that students of theology 
should be confined to home parishes? Is it right 
for Christians to spend so much on clothing, eat- 
ing, and drinking, and to take no thought to 
spread the gospel? Von Welz pleaded for the 
founding of missionary colleges to prepare 
workers. Finally, he laid aside his title, took 
along funds for his own support, and went on a 
lonely mission to Dutch Guiana. In that disease- 
ridden land he soon died. But the churches that 
thought him a wild dreamer had to follow in his 
footsteps. 

Aroused by conversations with Jesuit mission-— 
aries, another German, Baron von Leibnitz, pro- 


CHURCH SEEKS THE WHOLE WORLD 153 


posed that missionaries be sent to China by way 
of Russia. When the Berlin Academy of Sciences 
was founded in 1700 this design was, by his re- 
quest, inserted in its statutes. Two years later 
there was added a ‘‘collegium orientale’’ in order 
that, in its philosophical observations, the Society 
might ‘‘also be a college for the propagation of 
the Christian faith, worship, and virtue.’’ They 
had in mind that all the Protestants who traveled 
to China for any purpose should help spread the 
knowledge of Christ. Led by the greatest thinker 
of those times, these efforts may well be remem- 
bered as one of the contributions of science to the 
Church. Leibnitz strongly influenced Francke, 
the great Pietist leader, who was to have so large 
a part in the Danish-Halle Missions, soon to be 
started. 

The real missionary awakening awaited the 
coming of a new spirit in the churches. Religion 
in most of the Protestant countries in Europe had 
become to a large extent formal. It was in most 
eases tied up with a national church out of which 
much of the early zeal and earnestness had de- 
parted. The great preacher Philip Spener 
(1635-1705) pleaded powerfully for reality in re- 
ligion, for earnestness and purity of life. Many 
were hungry for this real Christianity and the 
movement, remembered as Pietism, gained great 
headway. Similar movements of vital religion 
arose in other countries. It is natural that 


154 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


Spener should have cared tremendously that the 
gospel be taken to the whole world. On the 
Church’s responsibility for this he preached with 
moving power. 

The romance of the influence of one man like 
Spener is most alluring. His greatest follower 
was Francke, who had a large influence on 
Zinzendorf. It was Count Zinzendorf who pro- 
vided on his extensive estate a home for the per- 
secuted Moravians and who became their leader. 
The zealous Moravians carried the gospel to the 
most distant and dangerous places. It was from 
Moravian missionaries that John Wesley learned 
there was a reality in Christianity which he had 
not experienced and which he sought until he 
found. The awakening under Wesley and White- 
field not only changed the life of England but 
had much to do with preparing the English-speak- 
ing world for its share in world-wide missions, 

One of the men who had lived for a time with 
Spener was Dr. Lutkens. He was appointed in 
1704 a royal chaplain of Denmark. Searcely a 
year passed before the new chaplain pointed out 
to the Danish king his Christian duty of seeking 
for Christ the inhabitants of those colonies in 
India, the West Indies, and Africa, that had come 
under the control of Denmark during the preced- 
ing century. Frederick IV agreed to undertake 
this task, provided funds, and commissioned the 
chaplain to seek out missionaries. Liitkens at 


CHURCH SEEKS THE WHOLE WORLD 155 


once founded a college to train future mission- 
aries, and at the same time he turned to his friend 
Francke at Halle for recruits for immediate 
service. Thus began the famous Danish-Halle 
Missions, under the patronage of the king of Den- 
mark and largely supported by German Chris- 
tians. 

In 1705 the first Danish-Halle missionaries 
sailed for India. At Tranquebar, Bartholomew 
Ziegenbalg and Henry Plitschau founded a work 
which, under the auspices of other societies, 
endures to this day. It is pleasant to recall the 
picture of these two pioneers sitting down with 
native children, learning to write the Tamil lan- 
guage with their fingers in the sand. They met 
scornful opposition from officials of Denmark, 
but with abundant labors they laid a worthy 
foundation for Protestant missions in India. 
After ten months they baptized five slaves of 
Danish masters, and five months later nine adult 
Hindus. As soon as possible they began, as many 
a& missionary has done since, the translation of 
the New Testament into the native tongue. Then 
they started on a Tamil dictionary. [Ill health, 
however, forced Pliitschau to return home after 
the work was well under way. Ziegenbalg died 
at the age of thirty-six but not until there were 
3009 converts, numerous catechumens, a transla- 
tion of the whole Bible in Tamil, a dictionary, and 
a seminary and a number of schools. Surely 


156 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


God’s hand has been in the choosing of the mis- 
sionary pioneers who have laid the foundations 
in India, China, and other great lands. 

In 1710 Francke began the compiling and issu- 
ing of annual mission reports, publications that 
had a tremendous influence in the early days of 
Protestant missions. There appeared about this 
time also the first foreign missionary hymn, 
destined to become very popular in Germany. 

The greatest of the Halle missionaries was 


’ Christian Friedrich Schwartz. Although he died 


more than a century and a quarter ago, a present- 
day student of India writes that his name still 
pervades the Tamil country like a perfume. 
Schwartz was a favorite pupil of Francke and a 
great scholar. Renouncing his patrimony and re- 
fusing prineely gifts that were offered him as the 
years went by, he put almost a half century of 
loving and humble service into a wide area in 
India. He became an outstanding force for peace 
and righteousness, so much so that he was trusted 
utterly by both natives and European officials. 
Among other responsibilities Schwartz was made 
guardian of the heir of the Rajah of Tanjore and 
regent of his realm. Thus a kingdom felt the in- 
fluence of a noble Christian ruler and a prince 
came to manhood under his guidance. At the 
time of Schwartz’s death twenty thousand adher- 
ents were connected with the Danish mission. 
Schwartz lived to have correspondence with 


CHURCH SEEKS THE WHOLE WORLD 157 


Carey after that hardy pioneer arrived in India, 
and Carey treasured this friendly greeting as a 
great benediction. 


But before taking up the work of Carey and his 
successors we must notice one other movement. 
Newspapers of July 10, 1925, reported a radio 
message from the MacMillan Arctic Expedition 
which included these interesting sentences: 


The day was spent in watering both ships and in giving the 
men a chance to hunt and explore the country around Hope- 
dale, center of Moravian missionary work. Had it not been 
for the Moravians, whose service with utterly inadequate 
funds is little short of marvelous, there would not be an 
Eskimo alive on the Labrador Coast today. Our men at- 
tended service here in a spotless little church.... W. W. 
Perrett in charge of the mission has done important work in 
botany, climatology, and ornithology. 


Here is most picturesque testimony to the 
effectiveness of one of the purest and most far- 
reaching streams of missionary service the world 
has ever known, a stream that has flowed without 
diminution for almost two centuries. 

Fleeing from Catholic persecution in Moravia 
in the early part of 1700, a band of Christians 
found refuge on the estate of Count Zinzendorf 
in Saxony. There they built a brotherly and 
blameless settlement called Herrnhut. 

A Negro from the West Indies stirred Herrn- 
hut by relating the sufferings of the slaves in 


158 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


those islands. He said, ‘‘You cannot come to 
the West Indies unless you are willing to become 
slaves.’’ Facing this prospect, which was not 
actually fulfilled, Leonard Dober, a potter, and 
David Ditschmann, a carpenter, set out for St. 
Thomas in 17382, the first of that noble company of 
Moravian missionaries whose labors have blessed 
the world. Others followed them. But the 
climate was so terrible that thirty-five mission- 
aries died im eleven years. Some suffered cruel 
imprisonment, and. their sufferings helped end 
the crime of slavery in the islands. 

On a visit to Copenhagen, Count Zinzendorf 
saw two Eskimos from Greenland and learned 
that Egede, the great pioneer missionary to that 
land, was giving up his work there. Zinzendorf 
told the story at Herrnhut. ‘‘When it was 
known that the Danish Government intended to 
abandon its mission in Greenland, two or three 
uneducated laborers in Herrnhut, without re- 
sources, felt that they ought to take up the work 
about to be laid down by the King of Denmark!’’ ® 
Such sublime audacity has marked the spread of 
the Kingdom of God. 

Always the Moravians were ready for the 
hardest places. 

In 1750 one of the Brethren went to Dutch 
Guiana where Von Welz had perished. It was 
the abode of Indians, of bush Negroes who had 


3 Lemuel C. Barnes, Two Thousand Years before Carey, p. 345. 


CHURCH SEEKS THE WHOLE WORLD 159 


fled from bondage and were therefore outlaws, 
and of slaves. For a time there was one mis- 
sionary death for each person won. In forty- 
eight years there were only fifty converts. Now 
more than half the colony is connected with 
Moravian churches. 

A heroic attempt to establish work on the West 
Coast of Africa cost dearly before it finally had 
to be abandoned. 

There were only six hundred persons in the 
settlement at Herrnhut, but within ten years mis- 
sionaries had gone from there to all quarters of 
the globe. ‘‘Within twenty years of the com- 
mencement of their work the Moravian Brethren 
had started more missions than Anglicans and 
Protestants had started in the two preceding 
centuries.’’ Within sixty years they had founded 
twenty-five mission stations. Besides the fields 
already mentioned, they have worked in Central 
and South America, in Africa, in India, and in 
Alaska. In a century and a half they sent out 
2170 foreign missionaries and they continue to- 
day to carry on a large work. 

During the fourth decade of the eighteenth cen- 
tury companies of Moravians began to migrate 
to the British colonies in America to undertake 
work among the Indians. They labored in 
Georgia, Pennsylvania, New York, and other colo- 
nies, and in great areas to the west. Perhaps 
their most noted missionary was Zeisberger, who 


160 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


opened no less than twenty-seven stations in 
Pennsylvania and Ohio and spent more than 
sixty years seeking the salvation and welfare of 
many tribes of Indians. 

The life purpose of the whole Moravian 
brotherhood was to spread the good news in 
which they rejoiced. While many went out as 
missionaries, the rest labored with their hands to 
make possible the further extension of the King- 
dom of God. Securing a tract of land in Pennsyl- 
vania, a considerable company of Moravians 
founded a new settlement which their leader and 
patron, then on a missionary visit to America, 
named Bethlehem, in the hope that the bread of 
life would be broken there. With characteristic 
energy the new settlers established industries at 
which all might work. In three years these com- 
munity enterprises not only supported the settle- 
ment but sustained about fifty missionaries on 
various mission fields. In Bethlehem and near- 
by towns ts continued today the Moravian tradi- 
tion of spotless Christian living and untiring 
Christian service. From Bethlehem is directed 
the far-reaching missionary endeavor of Ameri- 
can Moravians, which still includes a great work 
among the Indians. 

Thus it is evident that there had already been 
much preparation for the stupendous enterprise 
which William Carey and his friends inaugurated 
by awaking the English-speaking world to its mis- 


CHURCH SEEKS THE WHOLE WORLD 161 


sionary obligation. That little Baptist society 
turned its eyes, naturally enough, first to India, 
because the great activities of the Kast India 
Company were calling the attention of all Eng- 
lishmen to that land. 

India was a country of large extent and of very 
great population. (Today somewhere between a 
sixth and a fifth of the world’s people dwell 
there.) It was divided into many rival princi- 
palities. For centuries there had been trade be- 
tween India and Europe. Latterly the nations of 
Kurope, largely through giant trading companies, 
had been contending for the actual possession of 
India. England was winning out. 

As has already been shown, there had been 
early efforts, not wholly unsuccessful, to take 
Christianity to India. Tradition locates the sup- 
posed martyrdom of the Apostle Thomas at 
Milapur in Madras. In the fourth century, | 
Thomas of Jerusalem, a merchant, led a large | 
band of missionaries to India. In the sixth cen- 
tury a traveler found Christian churches and | 
clergy in Ceylon, in the interior of India, and 
along the Malabar Coast, and a bishop at Kalyan 
near Bombay. Toward the end of the ninth cen- 
tury England’s beloved Christian king, Alfred, 
sent two priests to India to carry a votive offer- 
ing which he had promised to St. Thomas. 
Marco Polo in his wanderings in the latter part 
of the thirteenth century found Christians and 


162 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


Jews in the kingdom of Travancore still using 
their own language. About the same time John 
of Monte Corvino spent some months in India on 
his way to China and baptized some hundreds of 
converts. ‘Two centuries later the Nestorians 
claimed thirty thousand families in one district. 
The work of the Jesuits in this country has al- 
ready been mentioned. 

However, when Carey arrived in India, nearly 
all its many million inhabitants had never heard 
of Christ or of a God of love. Because of the 
hostility of the British East India Company, 
Carey had to be content for years to work as a 
farmer, teacher, and indigo planter, doing what 
evangelizing he could. It is significant of the 
energy and devotion of the man that he used 
these years of opposition and waiting in studying 
the native language and translating the whole 
Bible into Bengali, an almost incredible achieve- 
ment. With eagerness he then plunged into the 
study of Sanskrit. 

Meanwhile, Carey’s letters had mightily stirred 
the churches in England. Four young men 
gladly offered themselves to be his assistants. 
Two of them reached India, Ward, a printer and 
editor, and Marshman, a_ successful teacher. 
Threatened with deportation by the Hast India 
Company, they landed at Serampore where, 
under the protection of Denmark, they started 
work. They were joined by Carey in 1800. Here 


CHURCH SEEKS THE WHOLE WORLD 163 


the three men, with their families, set up a joint 
household and for years held forth an example 
of Christian brotherhood and industry hard to 
duplicate in history. Hach worked at his par- 
ticular calling, for they all believed in supporting 
the mission by their own labors. When Lord 
Wellesley established a college for training Eng- 
lish officials, Carey was made teacher, and later 
professor, of Sanskrit, at a salary of five hun- 
dred rupees a month. Fifty rupees he kept for 
himself and his family, putting the rest into the 
work of the mission. Altogether, Carey is said 
to have contributed more than £46,000, or some- 
thing like $223,000 to the mission, while remit- 
tances from England for the same period were 
less than £2000. 

Some of the results of the Serampore Mission 
may be briefly summarised. The Bible was trans- 
lated, in whole or in part, into forty languages 
and dialects of India and Central Asia. Within 
eleven years of the commencement of their work 
the missionaries had nineteen printing presses 
going, and within thirty years they were print- 
ing the Bible and other Christian literature in 
vernacular tongues, that made these books avail- 
able to 330,000,000 people. In fact these early 
missionaries undertook practically all the now 
recognized forms of missionary work. Among 
Carey’s many accomplishments was expert 
gardening; flowers were his great hobby. A 


164 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


society for the improvement of native agriculture 
was started. Other enterprises included a gay- 
ings bank and a paper mill. There was an at- 
tempt at medical missions. ‘The mission sus- 
tained, at the end of eighteen years, 126 schools 
carried on in vernacular, with more than ten 
thousand pupils. Two years later Serampore 
College was founded. Thirty mission stations 
were opened, and the gospel was preached con- 
stantly. Carey lived to see twenty-six Indian 
churches established, with forty Indian pastors 
ministering to their own people. He himself bap- 
tized hundreds of believers. 

No one can speak of the beginning of modern 
missions in India without reference to the glori- 
ous name of Henry Martyn. Six years after the 
founding of the Serampore Mission, Martyn, a 
young clergyman of the Church of England, came 
to live across the river from Carey and his co- 
workers. Unable to stir his Church to missionary 
interest, Martyn had accepted appointment as 
chaplain of the Hast India Company. He had 
been moved to missionary zeal by the letters of 
Carey; now he was mightily helped by his com- 
radeship. Inspired by Carey’s translation 
scheme, he turned his brilliant scholarship to 
similar use and, in the six years before he used up 
all his little strength, translated the New Testa- 
ment into Hindustani and Persian. 

Martyn labored as an evangelist, establishing 


CHURCH SEEKS THE WHOLE WORLD 165 


schools and preaching places among beggars and 
outcastes. Finding the Brahmans almost invul- | 
nerable before his preaching he turned to the 
Moslems and attained surprising results. To 
Persia he went for a year to finish his Persian 
Testament and then, longing to see England once 
more, set out on the long journey, only to die in 
a little Turkish village. Like David Brainerd, 
from whom he drew much inspiration, Henry 
Martyn has wielded an influence down through 
the years far out of proportion to the brief span 
of his working life. 


Fourteen years after Carey arrived in India 
another great land was entered with the gospel. 
China covered then, as it does now, a vast area 
and contained an immense population. Probably 
then as now one out of every four persons in the 
world lived in China. It was in reality a civiliza- 
tion rather than a nation, for under numerous 
ruling dynasties it had calmly continued its life 
as a great people for at least four millenniums, 
possibly much longer. 

There is good evidence that several remarkable 
opportunities for the evangelizing of China had 
appeared through the centuries. During the 
Middle Ages there were current in Europe many 
rumors of a ‘‘Prester John’’ who was said to rule 
over a Christian kingdom in far Cathay. A tab- 
let dug up in Shansi Province testifies to the wide- 


166 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


spread and beneficent work of Nestorian mission- 
aries for a century and a half prior to the year 
781. Records of an effort in the next century to 
suppress all foreign religion show that at least 
three thousand Nestorian priests and other 
leaders were then at work in China. By the time 
Tamerlane overthrew Christianity perhaps as 
many as two hundred thousand Chinese were en- 
rolled in the Nestorian Church. One Chinese 
ruler is known to have sent to Baghdad for mis- 
sionaries for his people. 

Toward the end of the thirteenth century the 
Franciscan, John of Monte Corvino, was sent by 
the Pope to Peking, then known as Cambaluc. 
After some years of very considerable success, in 
which he baptized several thousand persons, 
John pleaded for helpers in his great task. The 
Pope made him archbishop of Cambalue and dis- 
patched seven priests as reenforcements. Four 
of them died on the difficult journey, and John 
wrote heartbrokenly, ‘‘Could reenforcements 
have been sent more promptly and vigorously, 
the great Emperor himself would have received 
baptism.”’ 

But perhaps the most regal opportunity the 
Church missed occurred when two Venetian 
traders, Nicolo and Maffeo Polo, returned from 
Peking with a request from the Great Khan that 
there be sent to him one hundred teachers and 
learned men who should be ‘‘able clearly to prove 


CHURCH SEEKS THE WHOLE WORLD 167 


to idolators and other kinds of folk that the Law 
of Christ was best.’’ Just at that time one of 
those shameless quarrels for power that dis- 
graced the Church in the Middle Ages kept the 
papal seat empty for two years. Then the new 
Pope dispatched two monks to seek to convert 
the vast Empire of Kublai Khan. The hardships 
of the journey caused them to turn back before 
they came anywhere near China; but the Polos 
with whom they were traveling—Nicolo’s son, 
Marco Polo, was with them this time—went on, 
to spend sixteen prosperous years in the Great 
Khan’s empire. Other feeble attempts to send 
missionaries to China during the Middle Ages 
accomplished little in the way of permanent 
results. 

When Robert Morrison, twenty-five years old, 
arrived in Macao in 1807, China was tightly shut. 
It was a capital offense to teach Chinese to for- 
elgners. For a time Morrison lived in complete 
retirement to avoid exciting suspicion. Again 
the East India Company had tried to block mis- 
sions. It had refused Morrison passage on any 
of its ships. He had taken ship, therefore, to New 
York. The oft-quoted remark of the man who had 
there arranged his passage on a trading vessel 
to China may indicate how the world looked on 
his enterprise: ‘‘So then, Mr. Morrison, you 
really expect to make an impression on the 
idolatry of the great Chinese Empire?’’ 


168 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


Morrison’s reply shows how he viewed it: ‘‘No, 
sir, but I expect God will.’’ 

This resolute young man had accomplished the 
almost incredible task of teaching himself 
Chinese. There were in the British Museum two 
old Chinese manuscripts, one containing most of 
the New Testament, translated into Chinese by 
some unknown Catholic missionary, and the other 
comprising a Latin-Chinese lexicon. Pouring 
over these treasures day after day Morrison had 
actually copied the hundreds of pages of their 
strange characters. The year after he went to 
China he was made interpreter for the Company 
that had refused him passage on its ships. 

It was seven years before Morrison baptized 
the first Chinese he won to Christ. At the time 
of his death, twenty-seven years after the com- 
mencement of his work, there was only a handful 
of believers—ten, according to some reports. 
But Morrison made a monumental contribution to 
the evangelization of China. In addition to his 
duties with the East India Company he trans- 
lated the whole New Testament by 1813. The next 
year the Company published his Chinese Diction- 
ary, a scholarly work in six large volumes, that 
has rendered invaluable service in the years of 
missionary translation since that day. Eventu- 
ally, Morrison translated nearly the whole Bible 
into Chinese, and published a large number of 
tracts and booklets. Mr. Milne who came out to 


CHURCH SEEKS THE WHOLE WORLD 169 


be his associate founded Malacca College. <A dis- 
pensary with a Chinese doctor was opened by 
Morrison, so that he may be said to have made 
the first attempt to introduce medical missions 
into China. 


America’s active participation in the great 
new enterprise in which she was destined to play 
so large and honorable a part began with the ar- 
rival at Calcutta in June, 1812, of Adoniram and 
Ann Hasseltine Judson and Samuel and Harriet 
Newell. These were followed quickly by the rest 
of that first group of young people that had been 
appointed to missionary service by the American 
Board. The young Americans were cordially re- 
ceived by Carey and his associates. But as usual 
the East India Company was hostile. The new 
missionaries were driven out of Bengal. Perhaps 
partly as a result of the privations they suffered 
Harriet Newell died, an early martyr to the cause. 

The Judsons began work in Burma in 1813. It 
seemed to be the only country in Asia open to 
them. There, in the hard years of pioneering for 
the gospel under an Oriental despotism, Ann 
Hasseltine Judson proved herself one of the 
heroines of the missionary enterprise. Burma 
went to war with England. Judson and Price, a 
medical missionary, and others were imprisoned 
and their lives threatened. In their behalf Mrs. 
Judson faced bravely the hostility of a barbarous 


170 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


government while by her ministries she made en- 
durable their twenty-one months of confinement. 
But her frail strength gave way after it was all 
over and she died. 

Judson baptized ten Burmese in the first seven 
years. In later years he worked among the 
Karens who were won in large numbers by him 
and his companions, for he was joined by a large 
number of other workers. Judson translated the 
Bible into Burmese, a valuable contribution to 
the work of missions. His devoted life has been 
a powerful inspiration to missionary service 
down through the years. 


Only three years after Carey arrived in India, 
the mission ship Duff landed eighteen mission- 
aries in the Society Islands, and the evangeliza- 
tion of the South Seas was begun. In 1816 
Robert Moffat started to work in South Africa. 
Four years later the Americans, Pliny Fiske and 
Levi Parsons, arrived in the Near Kast. Thug in 
less than thirty years after that historic gather- 
ing of twelve preachers in Kettering, England, 
the fire that they had kindled resulted in the be- 
ginning of the evangelization of all the great di- 
visions of the world that had been without the 
gospel. | 

Within a few decades, also, the official attitude 
of the churches of the West had changed. ‘Those 
who had looked askance at the humble Baptist 


CHURCH SEEKS THE WHOLE WORLD 171 


preachers and their scheme to carry the gospel 
to far-away lands were now following in their 
footsteps. The rapidity with which their idea 
was taken up is surprising. Within three years 
the London Missionary Society was formed by 
members of the independent churches. Its first 
field was Tahiti. The next year the Edinburgh 
Missionary Society, later known as the Scottish 
Missionary Society, was organized by members 
of the established as well as the free churches. It 
began work in West Africa. Later it was ab- 
sorbed by regular church boards. The same year 
saw the formation of the Glasgow Missionary 
Society. Its first work also was in West Africa 
and it was likewise absorbed later. The Church 
Missionary Society, originally the Society for 
Missions to Africa and the Kast, marked the en- 
trance of members of the Church of England into 
the great cause of world evangelization. The 
society was not favored, however, by the eccelesi- 
astics and did not receive their recognition until 
1841. The British and Foreign Bible Society, 
which has earried on such a tremendously effec- 
tive work, was formed in 1804. 

The formation of the American Board of Com- 
missioners for Foreign Missions in 1810 has 
already been noted. Four years later Baptists 
organized a General Missionary Convention. 
The Episcopalians began foreign mission work in 
1819. Methodist foreign missions began in 1832. 


172 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


The next year the first official representatives of 
the Presbyterian Church started work in India. In 
time all the denominations of any size in America 
as well as in England came to recognize foreign 
missions as an essential part of their work. 

But it is well to remember that world-wide mis- 
sions, the most beneficent international movement 
of modern times, began, so far as the Protestant 
Church is concerned, not with ecclesiastical or- 
ganizations at all but in the prayers and faith and 
labors of humble Christians. Indeed, those who 
first longed to go to spread the good news had to 
arouse the churches to send them. In the splendor 
of the present world-encircling movement one 
likes to think of the cobbler at his bench who mas- 
tered one difficult language after another and 
yearned over the great races indicated on the 
world map which he had drawn on wrapping 
paper and hung before him; and the young 
scholar who copied laboriously the intricate 
Chinese characters out of the museum manu- 
scripts; and the undergraduates at Williams Col- 
lege who pledged themselves to the evangelization 
of Asia while the storm raged around their hay- 
stack shelter. 


CHAPTER VI 


CHRIST AND THE NaTIons 


ROM Arctic snows to tropic jungles, on 

bleak Mongolian plains, amid the tall grass 

of Africa, in resplendent Oriental cities, 
there are established in the world today some 4400 
Protestant foreign mission stations. Ministering 
in these stations and wide surrounding regions 
are nearly 28,000 foreign missionaries. Their 
labors are shared by more than 150,000 men and 
women of the lands in which they work. The 
erowth of foreign missions in little more than a 
century and a quarter, from heroic beginnings in 
the face of towering obstacles to this tremendous 
world enterprise of Christian service, is one of 
the most remarkable movements in the history 
of man. 


Carey had searcely started on his work in India 
before the ship of the London Missionary Society 
landed eighteen missionaries on Tahiti, in the 
South Seas. They met with excellent success, 
though there was opposition and some had to re- 
tire to Australia for a while. As early as 1823 
Commander Duperry wrote: 


The missionaries of the Society of London have entirely 
changed the manners and customs of the inhabitants. Idolatry 
no longer exists... the bloody wars in which the people 

173 


174 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


engaged and human sacrifices have entirely ceased since 1816. 
All the natives can read and write. 


This story has been repeated in place after 
place in the South Seas. It is said that three hun- 
dred and fifty of the islands are now professedly 
Christian and that the Christian population is 
something like four hundred thousand. 

Some great apostles of the South Seas should 
be mentioned. John Williams, master mariner, 
beginning work in the early years of the last cen- 
tury, built a mission ship with his own hands and 
in it and three other home-made vessels carried 
the Word of God to every group of islands within 
two thousand miles until he was killed by canni- 
bals in 1839. 

Thirty-two years later the beloved Bishop 
Patteson was killed in revenge for a vile deed of 
white traders. They had painted their ship like 
the missionary’s bark of loving service and then 
carried off to forced labor in a distant land the 
natives who came on board at their invitation. 

James Chalmers, the ‘‘Great-Heart of New 
Guinea,’’ could not be satisfied with the splendid 
work he was already doing, but longed to tell of 
God’s love to those who had never been reached 
at all. He was killed in cold blood along with a 
colleague and ten or twelve school boys. That 
was in 1901. John G. Paton, by his loving and 
persevering service in the face of untold dangers, 


} 


CHRIST AND THE NATIONS 175 


wrote a glorious chapter in missionary history 
and won the New Hebrides to Christianity. 


Hawaii was entered by the American Board a 
quarter century after the King had sent a request 
to England begging for Christian teachers. The 
Christian messengers were actually on their way 
on the long journey by sailing vessel around Cape 
Horn when the people of the Islands, under the 
leadership of some of their chiefs, destroyed their 
idols and demolished their places of worship, 
leaving themselves without any religion. In fifty 
years the islands were evangelized. The mission- 
aries helped constitute a local church and then 
withdrew, though there is still a mission of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church at work in the 
Islands, and the influx of immigrants from Asia 
has raised a real missionary problem. ‘T'oday not 
only does the Hawaiian Church carry on splendid 
Christian work in Hawaii, but it conducts foreign 
missions in other islands. Thirty per cent of 
Hawalian ministers are engaged in foreign mis- 
sions, and more than a fifth of the contributions 
of the church are used for that purpose. 


Attempts to do missionary work in Africa were 
made very early. A year before Columbus sailed 
Portuguese missionaries responded to a request 
from the king of the Congo and started work in 
that vast area. Some seventy years later Jesuit 


176 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


priests entered South Africa, working along the 
Zambesi River. Both missions enjoyed royal 
favor, won kings and their counselors to the 
Church, and enrolled large numbers of at least 
nominal believers. As in numerous other places, 
no deep transformation of the native life oc- 
curred and there were no permanent results. 

The pioneer missionaries to India, Ziegenbalg 
and Plitschau, sent back an urgent message from 
the Cape of Good Hope, where they stopped en 
route, regarding the distressing condition of the 
Hottentots. The Moravian, George Schmidt, 
went to Cape Town in 1737. After six years of 
earnest work for the natives he was driven out by 
the persistent opposition of the Dutch Boers, who 
despised the Hottentots. Other attempts to 
spread the gospel in Africa were made in the 
eighteenth century, but nearly all with discourag- 
ing results. 

In 1816, however, there came a young man to 
South Africa whose name was to become a house- 
hold word throughout Christendom. Robert 
Moffat was scarcely of age when the London Mis- © 
sionary Society sent him to this field that had 
proved so difficult. Very soon he decided to try 
to establish missionary work in the village of 
Afrikaner, a chief whose depredations had spread 
terror throughout the land. All along the way 
settlers warned Moffat that Afrikaner would 
make a drum of his skin and use his skull for a 


CHRIST AND THE NATIONS 177 


drinking cup. Instead, the dreaded outlaw 
eventually became a humble Christian, the be- 
loved friend of the missionary and his coworker 
in spreading ‘the blessings of Christ to the sur- 
rounding territory. 

Later, at Kuruman, Robert and Mary Moffat 
established a very great mission station. Lov- 
ingly known as Ra-Mary and Ma-Mary, the influ- 
ence of these two spread far and wide. Moffat 
invented an alphabet and built a written language 
for his people, then gave them the Bible in that 
language. 

Going to England, after some twenty years in 
Afriea, in order to get his New Testament 
printed, Moffat stirred the heart of a young doc- 
tor, David Livingstone, who was waiting for the 
end of the Opium War in order to go to China as 
a missionary. The next year the doctor set out 
for Africa. Three years later he married the 
Moffats’ charming daughter, Mary. Two hun- 
dred miles to the north of Kuruman their labors 
brought blessing to a wide area. 

But the horrors of the slave trade would give 
the doctor no rest. Someone must open up to the 
light of civilization the vast dark heart of Africa. 
Livingstone became one of the most intrepid ex- 
plorers the world has ever seen. Across to the 
Atlantic, back to the Indian Ocean, up to the head- 
waters of the Nile, long shrouded in mystery, he 
pushed his way through seemingly hopeless ob- 


178 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


stacles a total of twenty-nine thousand miles. He 
traced the mighty river courses, found the health- 
ful areas for great mission centers, laid open to 
the world the sickening practises of the slave 
raiders. With very ordinary instruments he 
made priceless scientific observations. He filled 
in with accurate information what had always - 
been a blank space on the maps of Africa. 

But to the heart of Africa Livingstone was not 
the great explorer who won the plaudits of the 
world, but the messenger of Christ, who minis- 
tered tenderly to any whom he could help and 
whose sympathy won the hearts of the most hos- 
tile. Travelers over his trail years later found 
a tradition grown up of the great white man who 
had once come through the forests and who was 
different from any other man because he loved 
everyone. How he won the devotion of his black 
companions will be forever testified by the 
heroism of Susi and Chuma, who buried their 
leader’s heart under a tree and carried his em- 
balmed body nine hundred miles through danger- 
ous country to the sea, that it might rest in his 
own land. 

The establishing of missions throughout Africa 
alone would seem to be a staggering task for the 
Church. Yet today practically every large divi- 
sion of the huge continent has its own well-devel- 
oped work. Nearly all the chief denominations, 


CHRIST AND THE NATIONS 179 


representing a large number of countries, are 
making splendid contributions. One wishes for 
space to tell of the magnificent work of the Scotch 
at Lovedale, a work which has continued for more 
than a century, though it has required rebuilding 
three times, owing to the devastation of war; or of 
the Livingstonia Mission that is Christianizing a 
whole district, teaching the population to read 
and write, and gathering many thousands into the 
Christian Church; or of Uganda, the Christian 
nation in the interior of Africa; or of the Presby- 
terian enterprise in the Cameroun on the West 
Coast, almost given up a generation ago because 
of desperately disheartening conditions, but to- 
day crowding huge churches with thousands of 
Christians and teaching a whole people not only 
to read but to work with their hands and build a 
Christian civilization. 

The story of missions in Africa has not been 
all pleasant. In many places it has been heart- 
breaking. There are still large areas where al- 
most no results have been obtained. The toll in. 
missionary lives has been stupendous. In the 
little territory of Sierra Leone 109 missionaries 
died in twenty-five years. Added to the deaths 
from disease have been the murders by savages. 
As late as 1898 fifteen United Brethren mission- 
aries were massacred in this same state of Sierra 
Leone. There have been many ill-considered 


180 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


enterprises that have eost heavily and brought 
almost no results. And there have been terrible 
disappointments in the African character. Drink 
and immorality are besetting sins of the Africans. 
In many a mission now there are distressing times 
when church members fall back into these old 
ways. But on the other hand, there are very 
great, solid results such as would have surprised 
those first missionaries who dared enter the 
‘‘Dark Continent.”’ 


No part of the world presented a more difheult 
field to the pioneers of missions than the Moslem 
lands. Today perhaps an eighth of the popula- 
tion of the world 1s Mohammedan. Beginning 
opposite Gibraltar, the hosts of Islam reach 
across North Africa, control Egypt, and extend 
far to the south. They occupy Arabia, Syria, 
Turkey, Mesopotamia, in fact practically all the 
Near Hast. They reach up through Persia into 
the heart of Asia where vast tracts are Moham- 
medan. They extend down into India where they 
number about seventy million and then across into 
the Malay Peninsula and finally into the great 
islands off southeastern Asia. There are large 
numbers of Moslems under the American flag in 
the Philippines. 

At least two Christlike men attempted to reach 
the Mohammedans by the way of love and service 
when most of Europe thought the way to deal 


CHRIST AND THE NATIONS 181 


with them was with the sword of the Crusader. 
Francis of Assisi somehow passed through the 
Saracen army during the Fifth Crusade and 
actually preached to the Sultan himself in his 
headquarters. Raymond Lull, a wealthy noble- 
man, spent himself and his riches in trying to 
rouse Kurope to seek the conversion of Islam. 
Two of his own missionary trips ended in im- 
prisonment and the third in his death, despite his 
venerable age. From that day in 1315 until the 
nineteenth century very little attempt was made 
to carry the gospel to Mohammedans. And in the 
lands under Moslem government it has meant al- 
most certain death for any follower of the 
Prophet to become a Christian. 

Nevertheless, when modern missions began, the 
Moslem world could not long be neglected. The 
work of Henry Martyn in India and Persia has 
already been mentioned. A little more than a 
century ago Pliny Fiske and Levi Parsons went 
from America to attempt to establish a mission 
in Jerusalem. The plan was to try to reach Jews 
and Moslems. Permanent work was established 
in Beirit, Syria. Here and in Constantinople 
William Goodell, one of the great pioneers, trans- 
lated the whole Bible into Armeno-Turkish. 
Later, an excellent translation into Arabic was 
made, 

The missionaries s90n found that the members 
of the Eastern Christian churches—Armenian, 


182 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


Jacobite, Maronite and others—which had con- 
tinued for centuries in the midst of Mohammedan- 
ism, needed their help; and that, in fact, it would 
be hard to make any impression on the Moslems 
until these churches were awakened to a vital 
Christian life. Therefore, much of the mission 
work in the Near East has been with these Chris- 
tians. It was largely to train some of them for 
church leadership that Cyrus Hamlin started a 
school just outside Constantinople. He taught 
the students to help earn their way by laboring 
with their hands. He seemed to be master of 
most of the trades. During the Crimean War he 
supplied six thousand pounds of bread a day to 
Florence Nightingale’s hospitals. 

Hamlin’s great dream was a Christian college 
at the heart of the Moslem world. After some 
ten years of Turkish government procrastination 
he secured a beautiful site on the Bosporus and 
Robert College was founded. Here young men of 
the many jealous and warring races and nation- 
alities of the Near Hast, followers of the Chris- 
tian, Mohammedan, and Jewish religions, have 
studied and worked and played together, and 
from here they have gone out to positions of 
leadership to help spread the spirit of good will 
in place of the ancient hatreds. Other great 
schools have been established, among them the 
American University at Beirit, the International 
College at Smyrna, and the Constantinople 


CHRIST AND THE NATIONS 183 


Woman’s College. ‘There are numerous high 
schools and many primary schools. In most of 
the schools there have been Moslem pupils, and 
today the proportion of Moslems in some of them 
is very large. 

Outstanding work is being done along the 
Persian Gulf by the Reformed Church of Amer- 
ica, and in Egypt by the United Presbyterians. 
The Presbyterians conduct great missions in 
Syria and Persia. Recently a Union Mission has 
been established in Mesopotamia. In Cairo the 
Chureh Missionary Society has been able to work 
among the students of Al Azhar University, the 
great training school for Moslem missionaries. 
Very encouraging word comes from Persia, where 
work among the Mohammedans has been going on 
almost since the days of Henry Martyn. Oppor- 
tunities for evangelistic work are many, and some 
missionaries look for a large turning toward 
Christianity in that land. | 

In countries not under Moslem government it 
has not been impossible to win Mohammedans to 
Christ. Thousands of former Moslems have be- 
come Christians in Java, while in large districts 
of India almost every church has ex-Moslems 
among its members and a large number of the 
Christian workers have come out of Islam. 


Latin America did not at first receive from 
missionary societies the same attention given 


184 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


other lands. Nominally, a Christian Church was 
in control there. It became apparent, however, 
that in large areas there was as much need of 
missionaries aS in many other fields. The com- 
mon people were illiterate and ignorant of the 
Bible, while millions of Indians were scarcely 
touched by the Roman Catholic Church. 

There were no Protestant missions and not one 
Protestant church on the whole west coast of 
South America when David Trumbull landed at 
Santiago, Chile, in 1845. He had been sent to 
work among the sailors of that great port where 
fifteen hundred ships anchored in one year. Be- 
sides befriending hundreds of sailors, he was soon 
on good terms with British and American resi- 
dents of the city and organized a Union Church. 
At first the congregation met in a dark ware- 
house, because publie worship, other than Roman 
Catholic, was not allowed. It was seven years be- 
fore the church had a building of its own. Then 
the authorities bitterly opposed what was so con- 
trary to the laws and customs of the land and 
fmally relented only on condition that the church 
be wholly surrounded with a high fence, with only 
one inconspicuous gate, and that singing be so 
softly done that no passer-by might be tempted to 
enter. 

With the help of his wife, Trumbull started a 
school for girls. Until then all schools had been 
Roman Catholic. The authorities investigated 


CHRIST AND THE NATIONS 185 


and allowed him to proceed. He published news- 
papers in Spanish and wrote for a number of 
dailies, so that he gradually got his ideas abroad. 
He began to circulate Bibles. Years before, in 
the days when South American countries were 
winning their independence, James Thomson had 
come from London to open popular schools and 
distribute Bibles. He had worked in Argentina, 
Chile, Peru, Eeuador, and Colombia. The libera- 
tors had been glad of his presence. San Martin 
had helped him actively. And he had sold a great 
many Bibles. 

But the spirit of the liberators, who really 
loved freedom, had been supplanted by intoler- 
ance. Trumbull met with great opposition— 
but he continued to distribute Bibles. 

He fought superstition. He worked untiringly 
for reforms that would give religious freedom, 
that would open cemeteries to non-Catholies, and 
that would allow others than Roman Catholic 
clergy to perform the marriage ceremony. The 
exorbitant marriage fees demanded by the Church 
in power had brought it about that many couples 
simply dispensed with the ceremony. It took 
eight years of fighting to get free burial estab- 
lished, and the civil marriage bill was not passed 
until 1883. 

After he had been forty years in Chile, Dr. 
Trumbull became a citizen of that land in keeping 
with a vow he had made when fighting for re- 


186 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


forms that seemed so far off. He was eagerly 
welcomed by the President and the people, who 
had come to appreciate his great services. One 
of his Yale friends wrote of him, ‘‘ What Living- 
stone did for Africa was done for South America 
by David Trumbull.’’ 

There were nineteen other Latin American re- 
publies to be entered as Trumbull entered Chile 
and each has had her own missionary pioneers. 
It was not until 1867 that a Protestant church 
was organized in Mexico. In 1882 the President 
of Guatemala, when visiting New York, pleaded 
for a missionary and even offered to pay the trav- 
eling expenses of one to Guatemala. 

Splendid cooperation between the denomina- 
tions is being effected in Latin America. The 
Cincinnati Plan, worked out a few years ago, 
gave each church its definite responsibility in 
Mexico. A great Congress was held in Panama 
in 1916 to discuss and coordinate the work for 
Latin America. A Committee on Cooperation in 
Latin America brings together the North Ameri- 
can boards working in that field. The commit- 
tee’s educational secretary, with an office in 
Montevideo, keeps in touch with all Protestant 
schools in the several republics so that the best 
work may be done by all. In the spring of 1925 
there was held in Montevideo a Congress on 
Christian Work in South America. The Congress 
revealed an Evangelical Church that has come to 


CHRIST AND THE NATIONS 187 


have a recognized place in the life of the conti- 
nent. In recent years it has grown encourag- 
ingly in numbers and in consciousness of its mis- 
sion. At Montevideo this Church attempted to 
face frankly South America’s problems—such 
problems as health, social adjustment, labor, 
scarcity of Christian literature, and lack of 
knowledge of the living Christ. Definite plans 
were laid to help bring the spirit of Christ into 
the whole life of the continent. 

Missions got a late start in Japan because for 
so long a time that land was tightly shut against 
foreigners, and Christianity was forbidden on 
pain of death. In 1859, as soon as any ports were 
opened to foreigners, missionaries entered. LIllus- 
trious among these were James Hepburn, Bishop 
Williams, Samuel R. Brown, and Guido F. Ver- 
beck. They came into a hostile atmosphere. It 
was almost impossible even to find anyone who 
could be persuaded to teach them the language. 

Dr. Hepburn has been characterized as per- 
haps the most versatile Westerner who has ever 
been seen in the Hast. He was a physician, he 
headed the work of Biblical translation, he was 
an outstanding educator, and he prepared a Japa- 
nese-English dictionary so splendidly that it has 
been a standard. He and Dr. Brown translated 
the Gospels, and in 1887 he formally presented 
the whole Bible, translated by a committee, to the 
Japanese nation. 


188 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


Very different was the experience of Christian 
missionaries in Japan from those in many an- 
other field. In Japan it was the upper and influ- 
ential classes that were most easily reached. 
Japan was eager to become a modern nation, and 
the young men of the Samurai class diligently 
sought all the help they could get. As a result, 
the mission schools have been attended by the fu- 
ture leaders of the nation. | | 

A striking illustration of this is seen in the 
work of Verbeck. Men whom he taught in his 
school at Nagasaki became, after the revolution 
of 1868, important leaders of the government. 
Hiventually Verbeck was called to Tokyo, where 
he helped found the great Imperial University. 
Almost constantly he was consulted about the 
very difficult problems Japan faced in those days. 
He originated and organized the Japanese com- 
mission sent in 1871 to visit Europe and America. 
Without waiting to return home, the commission 
cabled back its advice that religious freedom be 
allowed. 

The first evangelical church was organized at 
Yokohama in 1873. Since that time the Christian 
Church in Japan has become a strong institution, 
including many outstanding men and women and 
carrying on a great work. 


Space does not permit telling of the entrance 
of Siam and other smaller lands by missionaries, 


CHRIST AND THE NATIONS 189 


although the story of each would make interest- 
ing reading. Into practically all the world 
foreign missions have carried their beneficent in- 
fluence. The growth of the enterprise has been re- 
markable. Robert Morrison’s death in 1834 left 
only two Protestant missionaries in China. To- 
day there are more than seventy-five hundred. 
The total number of Protestant foreign mission- 
aries in the world has almost doubled in twenty- 
two years: in 1903 there were something more 
than 14,300; by 1911 the number had risen to 
more than 19,300 while the figure for 1925 is 
27,872. In 1903 there were 2,669 regular stations 
in which missionaries lived and worked. In 1911 
there were 3,422; in 1925, 4,426. 

The great dominating purpose of the mission- 
ary has been to bring the good news of Christ 
to those who have not heard it. This has involved 
many and varied labors, such as, in the first place, 
preaching and all manner of evangelistic work. 
The market-place in Siam, the village square in 
India, the palaver house in Africa, crowded 
streets and gatherings of pilgrims at temple fes- 
tivals—all have provided the missionary with a 
congregation. Every feasible means of spread- 
ing the gospel has been used. In Japan, where 
nearly everyone reads, newspaper advertising has 
brought many inquiries, and correspondence 
classes have won ‘many believers. In the same 
land a veteran missionary with a great love for 


190 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


people in his heart made something like two thou- 
sand visits from house to house in one year. 

There are now more than thirty-six thousand 
organized churches connected with Protestant 
foreign missions, more than ten per cent of them 
being self-supporting. Regular preaching serv- 
ices are held in some fifty thousand other places. 
More than four hundred and fifty theological and 
Bible training schools are preparing eleven thou- 
sand Christians to help in making the gospel 
known. 

In his eagerness to get the message of Christ 
to all peoples, the missionary has been an ardent 
translator. We are told that in 1800 the Bible 
existed in only sixty-six languages and dialects, 
covering about one fifth of the world’s population. 
By 1900 the Bible or portions of it were avail- 
able for the vast majority of the people of the 
world in their native tongues. An officer of the 
American Bible Society reported in 1925 that the 
whole Bible had been translated into 158 lan- 
guages and dialects, the New Testament into 142 
additional tongues, and Bible portions (a single 
Gospel or more) into about five hundred more. 
Of course, not all this translating has been done 
by missionaries, but a great part of the work has 
been theirs. 

The work of translation is constantly going on. 
Only a little while ago it was reported that the 
first Christian literature of any kind had just 


CHRIST AND THE NATIONS 191 


been made available for some hundreds of thou- 
sands of Indians in Guatemala. One likes to 
think of the old African woman who for the first 
time heard the missionary read out of his new 
translation of part of the Word of God and ex- 
claimed in wonder, ‘‘It talks to him in our lan- 
guage.’’ It is interesting to know of the Chinese 
who had been helping a missionary translate the 
New Testament and said, ‘‘ Whoever made that 
book made me; it knows all that is in my heart.”’ 
In making available for nearly all the people of 
non-Christian lands the Bible with its great 
revelation of God and of the way of life, the mis- 
sionary has made an incalculable contribution to 
the world, even if he had never done anything 
else. Mission presses, established very early, 
have been among the greatest agencies of 
evangelization. 

To carry out the missionary’s purpose has re- 
quired that people be educated. The missionary 
was eager that all people should be able to read 
the Bible. He wanted an intelligent church and 
he wanted to train leaders for the great cause of 
Christ. He longed to banish age-old supersti- 
tions that held people in bondage—few things 
could do that better than actual knowledge of 
facts. He wanted to see abundant life enjoyed 
by all men, even the poorest and lowest, for whom 
the great ethnic religions made little provision. 

The very first Protestant missionaries to India 


192 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


developed extensive systems of schools. In China 
and Siam the only pupils who could be found for 
the first schools were poor children of the lowest 
classes who were actually paid small sums to at- 
tend. Today the mission schools in most coun- 
tries are crowded. Sons of high government offi- 
cials await their turn with sons of the poor on 
the waiting list of Teheran Christian College. 

In many a land mission schools were the first 
attempt at popular education. They set the 
standard for public school systems that are now 
growing up. ‘lo a land like China they brought 
modern educational ideas and the scientific 
method of seeking facts in place of the old sys- 
tem of memorizing the classics. 

Alexander Duff arrived in India during 
Carey’s lifetime. He soon conceived the idea of 
trying to reach the highest classes by college edu- 
eation in English that would make available for 
them the best there is in Western life. The Brit- 
ish Government took over his idea and began to 
establish colleges that would teach English his- 
tory and literature, with its stirring love of free- 
dom, as well as Western sciences. The mighty 
movement for freedom in India today is largely 
an outgrowth of this daring move by the British 
authorities. The number of Christian colleges in 
that land has grown to thirty-four and mission 
colleges in other lands bring the total just above 
ene hundred; some of these are outstanding in- 


CHRIST AND THE NATIONS 193 


stitutions like Peking or Canton Universities. 
Missionaries direct more than fifteen hundred 
high schools, while of elementary schools there is 
the surprising total of 46,580 with more than two 
million pupils enrolled. There are many other 
institutions, for instance 742 kindergartens and 
297 teacher-training schools. 

The influence of these schools cannot be meas- 
ured. Many thousands who have studied in them 
have become Christian. From them have come 
the vast majority of the leaders of the churches. 
Even pupils who have not become Christian have 
helped carry from these schools into the life of 
their countries, often into places of great influ- 
ence, Christian ideals and principles that are 
changing the outlook of whole peoples. Through 
the pupils of Christian schools Christian infliu- 
ence has reached into many a home where it could 
not have penetrated in any other way. 

Modern medical missions may be said to have 
begun with Dr. John Scudder, who landed in 
India in 1820. A successful physician in New 
York, he had one day picked up from a patient’s 
table a tract that aimed to set forth ‘‘The Claims 
of Six Hundred Million.’? Dr. Scudder felt the 
claims, and though it meant giving up many am- 
bitions and being disowned by his father, he went 
to India. All his children who lived to be old 
enough became missionaries to that land, five of 
them physicians. No less than thirty of his 


194 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


descendants have labored in India, while others 
have been missionaries elsewhere. 

Peter Parker is said to have opened China at 
the point of a lancet. In 1835 he established an 
ophthalmic hospital in Canton. It had been hard 
to obtain a site. At first his motives were ques- 
tioned. Hardly anyone could be induced to come. 
Soon, as cures were reported and sight was re- 
stored to some who had been blind for years, 
great crowds pressed upon the hospital, and Dr. 
Parker won the love of high officials and poor 
coolies alike. Even in our own day there are only 
fifteen hundred Western-trained doctors for all 
China, or one to more than 260,000 persons. 

Today there are more than 1,150 medi- 
cal missionaries and a few more than a thousand 
missionary nurses. Working with them are 
something more than six hundred doctors of the 
various countries while trained local assistants 
number well over five thousand. There are 858 
hospitals that take care of almost 400,000 in- 
patients a year, while the 1600 dispensaries give 
more than ten million treatments in one year. 
More than fifty thousand major operations are 
performed a year and almost three times as many 
minor operations. In fact the number of indi- 
vidual patients helped in a year by medical mis- 
sions runs close to five million. 

Practically every one of these patients is told 
the story of the love of Christ and told it under 


CHRIST AND THE NATIONS 195 


circumstances that give him a wonderful demon- 
stration of its meaning. It is conceded that 
the service of the medical missionaries is per- 
haps the best setting forth of the gospel message 
that is possible. ‘‘We have been loved into 
heaven by the love and mercy of the doctors and 
nurses, and we have given our souls to Christ, 
who sent them here to save us.’’ So answered a 
former Mohammedan woman when asked why she 
and her daughter had become Christian. Even 
those who could not understand the missionary’s 
words or who bitterly opposed his message have 
understood the meaning of love revealed in the 
healing of the sick. Missionary doctors have been 
able to go where no one else could. 

The work inaugurated by missionaries is result- 
ing in the developing of medical and nursing pro- 
fessions in many lands. This has involved a 
great change in attitude in lands where minister- 
ing to the bodies of the sick has been considered 
a menial, even a disgraceful task. Men and 
women have had to catch something of Christ’s 
spirit before they could thus devote themselves to 
the profession of healing, not for gain but that 
they might minister to those in need. Mission- 
aries themselves are conducting nineteen medical 
schools and seventy-two training schools for 
nurses. 

Medical missions have been a most effective 
means, though not at all the only means, of 


196 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


demonstrating the Christian conviction of the 
priceless value of every man, woman, and child 
in the sight of God. When a man or woman of 
high standing from far overseas goes into an out- 
caste village in India and with loving hands treats 
the loathsome sores or relieves the pains of an 
‘‘untouchable,’’? who is usually treated with less 
consideration than an animal, that outcaste takes 
on anew value. Soin many a way the missionary 
has ministered to the poorest and lowest of the 
people. It has been among the most despised 
groups that the mass movements toward Christ 
have taken place. An outcaste has found Christ 
and has communicated his joy to his fellow vil- 
lagers and before long village after village has 
sought this new way of life that is open even to 
those whom all men have. scorned. As early as 
1802 Schwartz baptized five thousand persons in 
three months. Clough baptized nine thousand in 
one year. Ina period of sixteen years the Metho- 
dists received into their number in India 184,000 
Christians. 

Christianity’s care for every man, woman, and 
child has been effectively set forth in missionary 
endeavors for specially unfortunate groups, 
whose condition in many lands has been pitiable. 
Leprosy is common in the lands of the Hast. 
Carey strove to lighten the sufferings of these 
miserable people in India. Since his day leper 
asylums have been started by missionaries in 


CHRIST AND THE NATIONS 197 


numerous places and there is now a well estab- 
lished Mission to Lepers cooperating in this work 
of mercy around the world. One of the most out- 
standing pieces of work for lepers is that con- 
ducted by Dr. J. W. McKean in Chiengmai, Siam. 
Dr. McKean was recently requested by the King 
to put on an exhibition of his work at a big 
Siamese ‘‘World’s Fair.”’ 

The first hospital for the insane in China was 
opened by a Presbyterian medical missionary. 
These poor sufferers were generally supposed to 
be the victims of demoniacal possession. 

Institutions for the blind and the deaf, for un- 
tainted children of lepers, and for others who 
need special help, as well: as 361 orphanages, tes- 
tify to the love that animates the missionary en- 
terprise and that is awaking a like love in many 
places. 

The missionary purpose has found expression 
again in all manner of industrial and agricultural 
work. Sam Higginbottom tells how he went out 
to make an every member canvass for a church 
in India. ‘‘How much will you give?’’ he asked 
the first member he visited. ‘‘I’ll give two dol- 
lars,’? replied the man. ‘‘Man alive, you can’t,”’ 
said Higginbottom, for the man worked for only 
two dollars a month, twenty-four dollars a year, 
and his family had one slim meal a day. A view 
of such conditions convinced Sam Higginbottom 
that the thing to do was to teach these people 


198 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


methods of modern farming. Accordingly, he 
came back to America and studied agriculture 
himself. At Allahabad Agricultural Institute he 
has taught many Indians to raise twenty-four 
bushels of wheat to the acre where formerly they 
raised six or ten bushels. On his farms sons of na- 
tive princes as well as sons of outcastes study to 
banish India’s long hunger. He has helped plan 
modern agricultural programs for Indian rulers. 
The people are learning that it is not the good- 
will or the displeasure of spirits that determines 
whether crops shall be good or bad. 

Tailoring, lace making, poultry raising, car- 
pentering, furniture making, are among the pro- 
ductive pursuits the missionary has taught in 
numerous lands. He has tried to prevent times 
of suffering and distress. But perhaps his true 
spirit has never shone more brightly than when 
such times have come. Plagues and famines have 
found him spending himself in relief work regard- 
less of his own safety. The missionary forces of 
the Near East wrote a glorious chapter in the his- 
tory of the race by their service to the myriads 
in need during the terrible days of the World 
War. Missionaries had a large part in carrying 
out the magnificent enterprise of relief during 
China’s appalling famine in 1921. By promoting 
reforestation of China’s denuded hills and in 
other ways they are working to prevent a recur- 
rence of that disaster. Hverywhere movements 


CHRIST AND THE NATIONS 199 


for human welfare have been inaugurated by mis- 
Sionaries and those whom they have won to 
Christ. 

One of the happiest results of modern missions 
in great sections of the world is the change they 
are bringing in the attitude toward women. ‘‘Ah, 
your God must be a very good God to send a doc- 
tor to the women. None of our gods ever sent us 
a doctor.’’ So said a Hindu woman, reflecting 
pathetically the neglect, often the oppression, of 
women by the great non-Christian religions. Mis- 
slonary women sought out Hindu and Moham- 
medan women and told them of God who loves 
women as much as men. When Dr. Clara Swain 
arrived in a little Indian city one January even- 
ing in 1870 and the next day began quietly to 
practise medicine, there was started one of the 
most Christlike of all missionary activities, the 
relieving of the physical sufferings of women and 
girls shut away in zenanas and harems. About 
two hundred and fifty of the missionary physi- 
cians at work today in foreign mission fields are 
women, and in addition there are almost one hun- 
dred native women physicians in mission hos- 
pitals. 

Missionaries founded schools for girls, an un- 
heard-of thing in most of Asia. In many places it 
was considered impossible for a woman to learn. 
Confucius had commended an uneducated woman 
as far better than an educated one. Today there 


200 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


are excellent women’s Christian colleges in the 
Orient. Christian women have become outstand- 
ing leaders in all the great countries of Asia. 
From the very beginning missionaries have 
labored to relieve the misery of millions of In- 
dian widows, doomed to lives of wretchedness. 
Now reform movements in Hinduism espouse the 
same cause. Perhaps it is little wonder that 
women have been such faithful followers of 
Christ. He it was who broke the bondage in 
which they had been held and first made abun- 
dant life possible for them. 


So, by many labors and in many ways the mis- 
slonary has sought to hold forth the love of 
Christ. One would not want to give the impres- 
sion that all has been heroism and glowing re- 
sults. Far from it. The vast bulk of the work 
has been patient and sometimes monotonous 
labor like any other good work well done. And 
there have been mistakes and blunders and fail- 
ures. No one would claim that every missionary 
has understood or expressed the spirit of Christ 
or that all policies of mission boards have been 
wise. But it is reassuring to realize that in the 
age of the world’s greatest material development 
with its powerful temptations to selfishness there 
grew also an enterprise of unselfish service to all 
men everywhere, as persistent, as tireless, as re- 
sourceful, and as statesmanlike as any of the vast 


CHRIST AND THE NATIONS 201 


political and commercial enterprises that marked 
the age. While the Hast and Africa were seeing 
all too much of the seamy side of Western na- 
tions, a great army of devoted men and women 
were seeking, no matter what the cost, to share 
with them the richest blessings that the West or 
the world ever knew. 

Surely nothing has done more for the churches 
in America than the missionary undertaking both 
at home and abroad. Increasingly their atten- 
tion has been given to this work of extending the 
Kingdom of God, and they have grown thereby. 
Today almost every denomination finds great joy 
in the missionary work it is privileged to do and 
its boards of missions play a large part in its 
life. There has been developed a missionary 
statesmanship as able as the statesmanship of 
nations and sometimes more far seeing. Hon. 
Henry Morgenthau pays high tribute to the mis- 
sionary leaders to whom he finally turned when 
he was about to sail as American ambassador to 
Turkey, for the intimate knowledge of the 
problems he would face in the Near Hast, knowl- 
edge which he found it hard to obtain from other 
sources.* 

Perhaps a larger measure of interdenomina- 
tional cooperation has been worked out in foreign 
missions than in any other phase of the Church’s 
life. On the field there is an effort to avoid all 


1See All in a Lifetime, by Henry G. Morgenthau, 


202 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


overlapping and to work together in all possible 
ways. At home the Foreign Missions Conference 
of North America (which holds a meeting every 
year for careful study of missionary problems 
and maintains an office in New York for the con- 
tinuous work of correlation) and similar organi- 
zations in other lands unite nearly all the boards 
for cooperative action. These organizations 
themselves are united in the International Mis- 
sionary Council, which has headquarters in Lon- 
don and New York. Several great world confer- 
ences on missions have been held. 

Something of the remarkable growth as well as 
the present magnitude of the foreign missionary 
enterprise is reflected in the contributions for its 
support. One recalls the sixty-three dollars con- 
tributed by the twelve ministers at Kettering, 
England, in 1792. Of course, other sums were 
being given on the Continent at that time. By 
1911 Protestant foreign mission societies of the 
world were receiving for their work $30,000,000 a 
year. By 1916 the annual income had risen to 
nearly $39,000,000. At present it is more than 
$69,000,000. As is fitting, the United States with 
its great prosperity has had a large share in the 
financial support of foreign missions, especially 
since the World War. The annual income of the 
foreign mission boards of the United States is 
more than $45,000,000. 

Members of the churches may well rejoice in 


CHRIST AND THE NATIONS 203 


this truly splendid growth in missionary giving. 
But let the sum be compared for a moment with 
the vast needs of the work in many lands; or with 
the amount the churches spend on self-support; 
or with what Americans spend thoughtlessly on 
other things; for example, $50,000,000 for chew- 
ing gum, $350,000,000 for soft drinks, $750,000,000 
for perfumes, face powder, and cosmetics, about 
$2,000,000 for tobacco! In reality the $45,000,000 
a year means only $1.68 for each Protestant 
church member, or slightly less than three and 
one fourth cents a week. Anyone who will ponder 
on what three and one fourth cents will buy may 
well wonder whether it really measures our aver- 
age interest in foreign missions. 

When Robert Morrison lay dying in 1884, after 
twenty-seven years of devoted service in China, 
he agreed with his fellow workers that it was 
searcely to be hoped that there would be one thou- 
sand baptized Chinese Christians at the end of 
a century. Yet when the century of missionary 
work came to a close, in spite of the appalling 
massacre of Christians by the Boxers a few years 
before, there were in China 179,000 Protestant 
communicants in good standing. Iifteen years 
later, in 1922, the membership had grown to about 
four hundred thousand. In all the lands in which 
foreign missions are at work today the Protes- 
tant community totals well over eight million. 
During the last year for which figures are avail- 


204 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


able, more than two hundred thousand believers 
were added to the churches. 

Of course, the results of missions cannot be 
measured by the number of converts. Powerful 
influences have been set to work that reach far 
out beyond the bounds of the Church. Christ is 
being revealed in the whole world, and in his light 
many things are being changed. He is revered 
by thousands of the best men and women in many 
lands and is increasingly becoming the standard 
by which character and customs must be judged 
the world around. 

But the Christian Church itself is no small 
force. In land after land, even where it is small 
in numbers, it is the most vital of all religious 
organizations and a leading force in all that 
makes for the highest human welfare and for true 
progress. In lands like China, India, and Japan 
great Christian leaders have arisen. There is a 
united Christian Church for South India, while 
all three of these lands have national Christian 
councils aiming to unite all Christians for the 
most effective service of Christ in their nations. 

Inspiring to Christians everywhere was the 
sight of the Chinese Church, proportionally so 
small a part of China’s people, meeting in the Na- 
tional Christian Conference at Shanghai in 1922 
and daring to undertake the task of trying to 
bring the spirit of Christ into the whole life of 
that troubled land. One of the purposes in setting 


CHRIST AND THE NATIONS 205 


up the National Christian Council was ‘‘the 
progressive study of the mind and will of God in 
relation to the fulfilling of His purpose in China.’’ 
A recent call of the Council for a forward move- 
ment of the whole Chinese Church is a thrilling 
document, setting as goals not organization, 
finance, or numbers, but truth, freedom, and love; 
and outlining as definite steps toward these goals 
measures which involve the most vital Christian 
living. 

Thus, when we gather to worship God, we may 
picture to ourselves hundreds of thousands of our 
fellow Christians of every land, of every color, 
and of every tongue, who worship the same God 
and Father of us all. And as we face our Chris- 
tian tasks, we may think of what they face, so few 
among so many and beset with such tremendous 
difficulties, and of the courageous way they have 
set out to win the whole life of their lands to 
Christ. How much may they count on us? 

The task is far from finished. Even terri- 
torially there is much land to be occupied. 
Writes a young Englishman from Kansu Proy- 
ince, China: ‘‘Eivery missionary is conscious of 
unoccupied areas. They extend from our very 
front doors, nay, from our private rooms, through 
innumerable districts and towns out into the 
desert silences of Sinkiang and Tibet.’’? Areas 
aggregating 819,000 square miles in China lie 

2 Paul Hutchinson, China’s Real Revolution, p. 166. 


206 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


more than ten miles from any Christian center. 
One district of 12,500,000 people is served by ten 
missionaries. One fifth of all the counties of 
China report not one evangelistic center. No 
wonder Paul Hutchinson writes, ‘‘The mere 
business of bringing Christian opportunity to all 
China will require vastly more support than we 
have so far given the missionary cause.’?* In 
Africa missionaries have had to watch the in- 
roads of Mohammedanism in territory they could 
not possibly reach. In India in the mass move- 
ment areas it has often been impossible to take 
into the Church all who wanted to come because 
there were not enough workers to teach them. In 
the interior of South America is a vast area equal 
to one third of all Asia and to one half of Africa 
that is ‘‘almost wholly outside the present 
spheres of evangelical activity.’ 

Very hurriedly in the course of these pages we 
have watched the messengers of the good news of 
Christ going forth: the first little group of dis- 
ciples starting out from Jerusalem to face a hos- 
tile world; the humble believers who spread the 
gospel through that old iron empire of Rome; the 
intrepid messengers who won the rough bar- 
barians of Hurope; the men and women of great 
faith who brought the gospel to the New World; 
the pioneers who through the years have kept up 
with the rapidly moving frontier in this land; the 

3 Paul Hutchinson, China’s Real Revolution, p. 167. 


CHRIST AND THE NATIONS 207 


boldly courageous spirits who, when Christianity 
was confined to Europe and America, dared be- 
lieve that Christ should be shared with all races 
and set out to help make him known though the 
field they entered comprised two thirds of the 
world; and finally a great company of mission- 
aries who have followed in their footsteps unable 
to rest while any son of earth knows not the love 
of the heavenly Father. 

With what persistence and determination have 
these messengers of the evangel pursued their 
task! Almost insurmountable obstacles, that 
might easily have been taken as good reasons for 
turning back, have increased their determination 
and sharpened their faculties to find a way. No 
expanse of ocean or wilderness has been too great 
to cross, no mountains too high to climb, no bar- 
riers of race or custom or language too towering 
to overcome. Dangers have not been able to hold 
them back, whether of tropical disease or savage 
foe. The greatest discouragements have failed 
to convince them that God did not want all men to 
be reached. No people have been so cruel or 
inhospitable as to quench the missionary spirit of 
love or so low in the seale of human living as to 
cause the missionary to lose hope that God could 
make them his true sons and daughters. 

Perhaps of many individual missionaries these 
things could not be said, but as we look at the long 
history of missions they are obviously true. Mis- 


208 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


sionary history has been a remarkable story of 
human ingenuity, learning, skill, patience, and al- 
most superhuman energy, all put to the service 
of carrying the message of Christ even to the 
most inhospitable lands. From devising curious 
alphabets to digging drainage systems to fight 
disease, from putting clothes on naked savages to 
conducting a great university, the missionary has 
made every human faculty and every bit of knowl- 
edge contribute to the cause of Christ on earth. 

But the story we have been following is not a 
story completed in the past. We can do vastly 
more than pay honor to the great souls who from 
the first century until now have been Christ’s 
messengers to far-away and difficult and often 
dangerous places. Or rather, there is only one 
way in which we can truly do them honor and that 
is by taking up with like courage and faith the 
enterprise which they have so nobly carried 
through the years. Others have labored and we 
are entered into their labors. The task is as 
urgent today as when Mills’ heart was stirred 
by the vision of a great and rapidly developing 
West that seemed in danger of slipping away 
from all religion, or when Carey yearned after 
the great races that were being brought vividly to 
the attention of Europe. Perhaps it is even more 
urgent. 

It would almost seem that the results of this 
whole missionary undertaking down through the 


CHRIST AND THE NATIONS 209 


centuries are now in the balance. In a very real 
sense it is for the Christians of today to say 
whether all this outpouring of life in every age 
and every land shall have been in vain or shall 
bear great fruit. ‘‘Alas! Christendom seems to 
many to be expressing itself more by gunboats 
and armies than by gentleness and forgiveness,’’ 
says the National Christian Council of China. 
‘‘The aggressive manifestation of Western civili- 
zation is no part of the Christian gospel. We 
have to admit that no country is truly Christian 
and that many so-called are still, in some of their 
relations with other countries, denying Christ. 
This whole question is very difficult to under- 
stand for those who have received Christianity 
from the very same countries which have men- 
aced and injured China in the past and which 
maintain huge armies and navies today.’’ * 

Most strikingly does this quotation emphasize 
the truth that has often been stated, that there 
ean be no division between the Church’s task at 
home and its task at the ends of the earth. ‘‘If I 
were a missionary in Canton, China,’’ says one 
writer, ‘‘my first prayer every morning, would be 
for the success of American home missions, for 
the sake of Canton, China.’’ The world has be- 
come a very small world. Radio, cable, news- 
papers, movies, make the doings of Western peo- 


4¥From a Call for a Forward Movement in the Chinese Church, 
issued in May, 1925. 


210 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


ples known in almost every land and many a 
dweller in the East wants to know why Chris- 
tianity has not been more effective in the West. 
Missionaries have often found the greatest ob- 
stacles to their work in the shortcomings of the 
so-called Christian West, in the influence of 
Western business men, and in the frightful con- 
ditions imposed by Western industrialism in 
China, India, and elsewhere. 

The enterprise of the Church has become one 
task. In the final analysis the same problems 
must be solved and the same victories won the 
world around, and it seems clear that the attain- 
ing ‘of the solutions and the winning of the vic- 
tories will require the devotion of every Chris- 
tian. Races must learn to live together as 
Christian brothers in America as well as in India. 
It makes a difference, indeed a vast difference, to 
the world-wide cause of missions, if we have not 
brought the spirit of Christ into industry in this 
country and Western industrialism goes to China 
to work women and children twelve or fourteen 
hours a day for ten or twenty cents. 

We have come to the day when neither ideas 
nor religions can be kept safely within walls. 
Hither Christianity is adequate for the whole 
world and for all the life of the world or it can- 
not long be adequate for any part of mankind. 
The Christian task of today is no less than the 
bringing of the spirit of Christ into every part 


CHRIST AND THE NATIONS 211 


and every relationship of life throughout the 
world. 

This may involve pioneering of the most dar- 
ing sort. Into unknown lands to face hostile peo- 
ple went the missionary in the past. Today there 
are no more geographical continents to enter but 
whole continents of our life remain to be entered 
for Christ. They may be uncharted but not 
more so than the seas John Williams sailed. 
They may present danger and hardships but 
surely not more so than the vast West which Mar- 
cus Whitman and his companions boldly claimed 
for Christ. 

To all who have followed with any interest this 
story of the Christian messengers down through 
the centuries, the real challenge now is whether 
they dare take Christ seriously for our day. It 
is not enough to give to missions or pray for mis- 
sions, much as these forms of support are needed. 
If we mean to honor those who have so devotedly 
given their lives to the cause of Christ at home 
and abroad, if we mean to play fair with our 
brother Christians of many races and tribes and 
tongues who have through the labors of these mis- 
sionaries come to serve the same Lord we follow, 
then we must take Christ seriously for all the life 
of our land and all lands, and help make Chris- 
tianity vital in our own community that it may 
be vital in the world. 










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BIBLIOGRAPHY 





BOOKS THAT TELL THE STORY OF 
MISSIONS 


The following is a selected list of interesting books for those 
who would read more about missionaries and their work. 

Those who desire to make a more or less serious study of 
the subjects mentioned in the book are referred to the “Sug- 
gestions for Study and Discussion” on The Story of Missions, 
available from the publishers. 

Books published by the following agencies—for whom ab- 
breviations as noted are used in the list—should be ordered 
through denominational headquarters. 

M.E.M., Missionary Education Movement 

C.W.H.M., Council of Women for Home Missions 

C.C., The Central Committee on the United Study of For- 

eign Missions 


GENERAL AND HISTORICAL 


Alaskan Missions of the Episcopal Church, The. Hupson 
Stuck. National Council, Protestant Episcopal Church, 
New York. Out of print. 

All in a Life Time. Henry Morcentuavu. Doubleday, Page 
and Co., Garden City, N. Y. 1922. $4.00. 

Apostles of Medieval Europe. G. F. Mactgar. Macmillan 
Co., New York. Out of print. 

Business of Missions, The. Corneuius H. Parron. Maemil- 
lan Co., New York. 1924. $2.00. 

A brief view of the whole foreign mission enterprise of 
our day and its relation to the average church member. 

Century of Endeavor, A. JuutA C. Emory. National Council, 
Protestant Episcopal Church, New York. 1921. 75 cents. 

Conversion of Europe, The. CHartes H. Rosinson. Long- 
mans, Green and Co., New York. 1917. $6.50, 

215 


216 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


Expansion of Christendom, The. Mrs. CHarLES ASHLEY 
Carus-Wiuson. George H. Doran Co., New York. 1914. 

| Out of print. 

Faiths of Mankind, The. KE. D. Soper. Association Press, 
New York. 1918. $1.15. 

For a New America. Cok Hayne. C.W.H.M. and M.E.M. 
1923. 75 cents. 

From Survey to Service. H. Paunt Dovauass. C.W.H.M. 
and M.E.M. 1921. 75 cents. 

Gospel among the Slaves, The. Publishing House of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, South, Nashville, Tennessee. 
1893. Out of print. 

A short account of missionary operations among the 
African slaves of the southern states. Compiled from 
original sources and edited by W. P. Harrison. 

History of American Christianity. L. W. Bacon. Charles 
Seribner’s Sons, New York. 1925. $3.00. (American 
Church History Series, Vol. XIII.) 

History of Christian Missions. CHartes H. Ropinson. 
Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York. 1923. $3.50. 

History of Christian Missions during the Middle Ages, A. 
G. F. Mactgar. Maemillan Co., New York. Out of print. 

How the Gospel Spread through Europe. CHARLES H. Ros- 
INSON. Macmillan Co., New York. 1919. $2.00. 

Iowa Band, The. Epnraim ApAms. Pilgrim Press, Boston. 
Out of print. 

Kingdom and the Nations, The. Eric M. Nortn. C.C. 1921. 
75 cents. 

Leavening the Nation; the Story of American (Protestant) 
Home Missions. JosepH B. CuarK. Baker and Taylor, 
New York. 1903. Out of print. 

Marks of a World Christian. Danrteu J. Furminc. Associa- 
tion Press, New York. 1919. $1.15. 

A devotional study book that every Christian ought to 
know, 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 217 


Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three 
Centuries. ApoLPH Harnack. Tr. and edited by James 
Moffat. Second enlarged and revised edition. G. P. Put- 
nam’s Sons, New York. 1909. $7.00. 

Missionary Enterprise, The. KE. M. Buiss. Fleming H. Re- 
vell Co., New York. 1908. $1.75. 

Missionary Explorers among the American Indians. Mary 
Gay Humpureys. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York. 
1913. $2.00. 

Missionary History of the Pacific Northwest. H. K. Hinks. 
Published by the author. 1899. 

Missionary Milestones. Marcaret R. Serpacn. C.W.H.M. 
1917. 30 cents. 

Our Ancestors in Europe. JENNIE Hau. Silver, Burdett 
and Co., New York. 1916. $1.12. 

Outline of History of Protestant Missions. Gustav War- 
NECK. G. Robson, Editor. Fleming H. Revell Co., New 
York. 1912. Out of print. 

Playing Square with Tomorrow. Frep Eastman. C.W.H.M. 
and M.E.M. 75 cents. 

Progress of World-wide Missions, The. Rosert H. GLover, 
George H. Doran Co., New York. 1924. $2.50. 

Religious Foundations of America. CHARLES L. THOMPSON. 
Fleming H. Revell Co., New York. 1917. $1.50. 

A study in national origins. 

Social Aspects of Foreign Missions, The. Witulam H. P. 
Faunce. M.E.M. 1914. 50 cents. 

Spread of Christianity, The. Pauut Hutcuinson, The Ab- 
ingdon Press, New York. 1922. $1.25. 

Syllabus of Lectures on the Outlines of the History of Chris- 
tian Missions, A. WiLLIAM OWEN Carver. Baptist Book 
Concern, Louisville, Kentucky. 1921. 

Two Thousand Years of Missions before Carey. LeMuEL C. 
Barnes. American Baptist Publication Society, Philadel- 
phia. $1.50. 


218 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


Via Christi; an Introduction to the Study of Missions. 
Louisa Manninc Hopexins. Macmillan Co., New York. 
$1.25. : 

Winning the Oregon Country. JouHNn T. Faris. Westminster 
Press, Philadelphia. 1912. $1.00. 

Wonders of Missions. CArouINE A. Mason. George H. Doran 
Co., New York. 1922. $2.00. 

World Friendship, Inc. J. Lovenu Murray. M.E.M. 1921. 
75 cents. 


FIELDS 


There are so many fine books on the work of home and for- 
eign missions in various fields that all that can be done here 
is to suggest good examples, with no attempt to cover all the 
fields. Fuller lists may be procured from mission boards. 


HOME MISSIONS 


Beyond City Limits. F. D. Goopwin. National Council, 
Protestant Episcopal Church, New York. 1926. 60 cents. 

Christianity and Industry. WittramM ApAmMs' Brown. 
Womans Press, New York. 1919. 35 cents. 

Empty Churches. C. J. Gaupin. Century Co., New York. 
1925. $1.25. 

Farmer’s Church, The. WarreN H. Wiuson. Century Co., 
New York. 1925. $2.00. 

From Over the Border. VERNON McComps. M.E.M. 1925. 
75 cents. 

Frontier Missionary Problems; Their Character and Solution. 
Bruce Kinney. Fleming H. Revell Co., New York. 
1918. $1.25. 

Gospel for a Working World. Harry F. Warp. M.E.M. 
1918. 75 cents. 

Immigrant Forces. Wrutt1AM P. Suriver, M.E.M, 1913. 
75 cents. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 219 


Land of Saddle-bags, The. James Watt Raine. C.W.H.M. 
and M.E.M. 1924. $1.50. 

A study of the mountain people of Appalachia. 

Men and Things. Henry A. Atkinson. M.E.M. 1918. 75 
cents. 3 
A study of migrant groups. 

Mormonism; The Islam of America. Bruce Kinney. Flem- 
ing H. Revell Co., New York. 1912. $1.25. 

Near Side of the Mexican Question, The. J. 8S. SvowsEnu. 
George H. Doran Co., New York. 1921. $1.50. 

Our Templed Hills. RatpH A. Feuton. M.E.M. 1926. 
$1.00. 

Peasant Pioneers. KENNETH D. Miuter. C.W.H.M. and 
M.E.M. 1925. $1.00. 

A study of the Slav in America. 

Red Man in the United States, The. Gustavus EK. BE. Lryp- 
quist. George H. Doran Co., New York. 1923. $3.50. 

Serving the Neighborhood. RaupH A. Frevton. C.W.H.M. 
and M.E.M. 1920. 75 cents. 

Soul of America, The. C. L. THompson. Fleming H. Re- 
vell Co., New York. 1919. 50 cents. 

Through Santo Domingo and Haiti. Samurt Guy INMAN. 
Committee on Cooperation in Latin America. 1919. 50 
cents. 

Travels in Alaska. JouN Mutr. Houghton Mifflin Co., Bos- 
ton. 1915. $3.25. 

Trend of the Races, The. Grorce KE. Haynes. C.W.H.M. and 
M.E.M. 1922. 75 cents. 

Winning of the West, The. THroporRE RoosEvELT. G. P. 
Putnam’s Sons, New York. $10.50. 

Woman on the Farm, The. Mary M. AtKxrson. Century Co., 
New York. 1924. $2.00. 


FOREIGN MISSIONS 


African Clearings. JEAN KENYON MACKENZIE. Houghton 
Mifflin Co., Boston. 1924. $2.50. 


220 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


African Trail, An. JEAN Kenyon Mackenziz. C.C. 1917. 
50 cents. 

Bells of the Blue Pagoda, The. JEAN CARTER COCHRAN. 
Westminster Press, New York. 1922. $1.75. 

China’s Real Revolution. Paut Hutcuinson. M.E.M. 1924. 
75 cents. 

Christ of the Indian Road, The. KE. Stantey Jones. Abing- 
don Press, New York. 1925. $1.00. 

Conversion of the Pagan World, The. Taoto Manna. Tr. 
by JosepH F’. McGuincuuy. Order through Macmillan 
Co., New York. 

Expectation of Siam, The. ArtHuR JuDSON Brown. Presby- 
terian Board of Foreign Missions, New York. 1925. 50 
cents. 

Foreign Magic. JEAN CartTeR CocHrAN. M.E.M. 1919. 
$1.50. 

Gentleman in Prison, A. Toxicut Isui1. George H. Doran 
Co., New York. 1922. $1.75. 

India, Beloved of Heaven. Brenton T. Bapury. Abingdon 
Press, New York. 1918. $1.00. 

India on the March. Aupen H. CuarK. M.E.M. 1922. 75 
cents. 

Japan on the Upward Trail. Wriuutam Axutnc. M.E.M. 
1923. 75 cents. 

Least of These in Colombia, The. M. N. Wruttams. Fleming 
H. Revell Co., New York. 1918. $1.25. 

Looking Ahead with Latin America. STANLEY HicgH. M.E.M. 
1925. 75 cents. 

Making a Nation. D. S. Hipparp. Board of Foreign Mis- 
sions of the Presbyterian Church in the U. 8. A., New 
York. 1926. 50 cents. 

Missionary Idea in Life and Religion, The. J. F. McFapyen. 
Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York. 1926. $1.50. 

Missions and World Problems. The Inquiry, 129 East 52nd 
Street, New York. 1925. $1.00. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 221 


Riddle of Nearer Asia, The. Basis Matuews. George H. 
Doran Co., New York. 1919. 50 cents. 

Unfinished Task of Foreign Missions, The. Roxpert KE. SPEER. 
Fleming H. Revell Co., New York. 1926. $2.75. 

Whither Bound in Missions. DANIEL J. FLEMING. Associa- 
tion Press, New York. 1925. $2.00. 

Young Islam on Trek. Bast. Matuews. M.E.M. 1926. 
$1.00. 


BIOGRAPHY 


No more stirring reading could be recommended to anyone 
than the biographies of great missionaries. A few are men- 
tioned here, but there are many more equally good. 


NATIONAL MISSIONS 


Alaskan Pathfinder, The. Joun T. Farts. Fleming H. Re- 
vell Co., New York. 1913. $1.00. 

Apostle of Alaska, The. JoHN W. ArcoTANDER. Fleming H. 
Revell Co., New York. 1909. $1.50. 
Fifty Years as a Presiding Elder. PrterR CARTWRIGHT. 
Methodist Book Concern, New York. Out of print. 
Finding a Way Out. An autobiography. Roserr R. Moron. 
Doubleday, Page and Co., Garden City, New York. 1920. 
$2.50. 
The life story of Booker T. Washington’s successor at 
Tuskegee. 

Heroes of the Cross in America. Don O. SHetTon. M.E.M, 
Out of print. 

Higgins, a Man’s Christian. Norman Duncan. Harper and 
Brothers, New York. 1909. 

In the Vanguard of a Race. L. H. HAmmonp. M.E.M. 1922. 
Cloth, $1.00; paper, 75 cents. 

John P. Williamson; a Brother to the Sioux. WiInirrepD W. 
Barton. Fleming H. Revell Co., New York. 1919. $1.75. 


222 THE STORY OF MISSIONS 


Joseph Ward of Dakota. Grorce Harrison Duranp. Pil- 
grim Press, Boston. 1913. Out of print. 

Life and Labors of Bishop Hare, The. M. A. DEWOLFE 
Howe. Bookstore of the National Council, 281 Fourth 
Avenue, New York. 1912. $1.00. 

Marcus Whitman. W. A. Mowry. Silver, Burdett and Co., 
New York. Out of print. 

Memoir of John Mason Peck. Rurus Bascock. American 
Baptist Publication Society, Philadelphia. 

Oregon Missions, The. J. W. BasHrorp. Abingdon Press, 
New York. 1918. $1.25. 

Samuel J. Mills, a Missionary Pathfinder. Tuomas C, RicH- 
ARDS. Pilgrim Press, Boston. Out of print. 

Sheldon Jackson. Ropert Lairp Stewart. Fleming H. 
Revell Co., New York. Out of print. 

Up from Slavery. Booker T. Wasuineton. A. L. Burt Co., 
New York. 1926. $1.00. 


FOREIGN MISSIONS 


Alexander Duff. Wiuu1am Paton. George H. Doran Co., 
New York. 1923. $1.50. 

Ann of Ava. ErHen, Danrets Hupparp,. M.E.M. 1913. 
$1.00. 

Black Bearded Barbarian, The. Marian Kerto. M.E.M. 
1912. $1.00. 

Captain Bickel of the Inland Sea. CuHarLtes K. HarrinGton. 
Fleming H. Revell Co., New York. 1919. $1.75. 

Don Raimon. E. K. Sretu-SmirH. Macmillan Co., New 
York. 1920. Out of print. 
A story of Raymond Lull. 

Francois Coillard, a Wayfaring Man. Epwarp SHILLITO. 
George H. Doran Co., New York. 1923. $1.50. 

Henry Martyn, Confessor of the Faith. Constance KE. Pap- 
wick. George H. Doran Co., New York. 1923. $1.50. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 223 


James Chalmers. Ricuarp Lovett. Fleming H. Revell Co., 
New York. $2.00. Autobiography and letters. 

Labrador Doctor, A. W. T. GRENFELL. Houghton Mifflin 
Co., Boston. 1919. $5.00. An autobiography. 

Infe of Robert Laws of Livingstonia, The. W. P. Livine- 
STONE. George H. Doran Co., New York. 1921. $3.00. 
A narrative of missionary adventure and achievement. 

Makers of South America. Maraarerre Danrets. M.E.M. 
1916. $1.00. 

Ministers of Mercy. James H. Franxuin. M.E.M. 1919. 
$1.00. 

Missionary Heroes of Africa, The. J. H. Morrison. George 
H. Doran Co., New York. 1922. $1.50. 

Moffats, The. Eruen Daniets Hupparp. M.E.M. 1917. 
$1.00. 

Pennell of the Afghan Frontier, Autick M. Penneuu. E. P. 
Dutton and Co., New York. 1914. Out of print. 

Personal Life of David Livingstone, The. W. GARDEN BLAIKIE. 
Fleming H. Revell Co., New York. $1.50. 

Robert Morrison, Master Builder. MarsHAaLL BROOMHALL. 
George H. Doran Co., New York. 1924. $1.50. 

Servants of the King. Ropert E. Speer. M.E.M. 1909. 
Cloth, $1.00; paper, 75 cents. 

Shelton of Tibet. FuoraA Beau SHELTON. George H. Doran 
Co., New York. 1923. $2.00. 

Shepard of Aintab. AuiceE SHEPARD Riaas. M.E.M. 1920. 
$1.00. 

Story of John G. Paton, The. JAmes Paton, Editor. George 
H. Doran Co., New York. 1924. $1.50. 

Sundar Singh. Hi. SANDERS and ETHELRED JupAH. Maemil- 
lan Co., New York. 1925. $1.00. 

White Queen of Okoyong, The. W. P. Livinastons. George 
H. Doran Co., New York. 1925. $1.50. 
A true story of Mary Slessor. 






ii 

























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